'What could it hurt?'

I-AM-TIRED. I guess age is catching up and allnighters are harder feats each time. After a few days facing a PC and cellphones, it seems like a good time to switch off my connected self and think about my family and ruminate about the family and its values, especially after the 5th World Meeting of Families just ended (good roundup found here).

The Catholic Church, and our Pope, has always hailed the institution of the family as an earthly prefigurement of the 'love of God the Father made manifest and incarnate in Christ', and the perfect channel for transmission of Faith. "Defense of the family" these days, however, seems synonymous with what some termed 'bigotry' against liberal-championed demands for 'equality' in non-traditional 'unions': same-sex marriage, same-sex-parents adoption rights, etc.

In my work circle, I meet a lot of Indians and Indian ethnic who, coming from a land of long tradition of mixing cultures, pride themselves in being tolerant. Typical questions I hear when the gay subculture topic is broached range from: (1) "What's wrong with being gay?", to (2) "If they want to get married, why shouldn't the state accord the same privileges and rights to heterosexual marriage?", to (3)"If they can be as good as any husband and wife, why shouldn't they have the right to adopt kids?"

Those of you who have amused yourselves reading my erstwhile rants from waa...aay back would know many years ago, I asked myself Question 1 and came up with "Nothing." Outside its deviant character, I believed that being gay must be a cross to bear, and that being a celibate gay, must be an even heavier cross to bear. So I questioned the Church's teaching that homosexual intercourse is intrinsically evil. Believing that some gays were 'predisposed since birth', I wonder why not give them a small allowance on some earthly comfort since they were doomed to die and not propagate their deviant genes anyway?

On question 2, I am not qualified to offer any opinion. I'm not an economist or a political commentator. Here's an excellent article (written by a self-proclaimed libertarian) about why state-sponsored social changes should be treated with caution.

When it comes to the issue of children, I stopped myself. It was a slippery slope: let adults decide for themselves, but children should not be taught that it is normal to be gay. And how can this be avoided when both its parents (not 'father' and 'mother', but 'Parent A' and 'Parent B') are gay? And since procreation is a motivation (and a consequence) for heterosexual intercourse, why should gay couples, whom through their physical acts surely did not intend to procreate, want to have children?

So how does the mainstream acceptance of gay lifestyle undermine the family?

The Church is wiser than her children obviously. Gradually, through milestone events that happened all over the world, I realized that the deviant cannot be accorded the same recognition as the natural. Increasingly, the deviant is pushing to be the acceptable while the natural is increasingly painted as the archaic and bigoted. There is still sympathy, but looking at these people self-ridiculing and reveling in their degradation made me think they do not only want to be accepted but also for the whole world to be like them.

Take a look at possible results of the revolution pushing for gay marriage and gay-couple adoption: perhaps one day your child reaches a legal limit age and said, "It's time to decide whether I want to adopt a heterosexual or a homosexual lifestyle."; or maybe you are a teacher and the law forces you to teach that it is normal for human beings have two sexual preferences (or more?), and reproduction has nothing to do with sexual intercourse; or maybe the Church and Christians will be persecuted for 'hate crime'?

Mark Shea here has a concise post on "what could it hurt?" and expressed himself better in less words than I ever could with more.

My family isn't perfect; I'm fortunate to have a father and a mother who are still staying together. Thank God for my family!