Why does every single Disney princess have to have a Prince Charming? What’s wrong with praising the love of family? Would it really be the end of the world for her to have a somewhat ambiguous relationship with a woman? Did you know historically in Catholic Europe large sections of the population were never either lay nor part of religious life? Did you know that the love of the friend was extolled and praised above marriage?
Well, the better question is why all the heroes have to be part of the nobility, but that is a question that the experts on myth have to explain. Suffice it to say that there are enduring patterns in how mythology works on the human imagination.
The Greeks praised the love of a friend about marriage, but some of them had some very strange ideas about bringing up boys, too. Why would we take their word over the word of the saints who lived among them and saw their styles of life first-hand?
There is no reason that characters in children’s fairy tales need to wind up married when their adventures end. There is no reason to avoid having heroes are surrounded by friends as their companions, instead.
There* is *a good reason to avoid implying that males and females are interchangeable as romantic interests. They aren’t. There is also a good reason to avoid ambiguity about whether same-sex romantic relationships are morally permissible, because they aren’t. It is not necessary to go to lengths to assure all the listeners that there is no hanky panky going on between any two characters who aren’t married, but Christians ought to avoid “suggestive and silly talk.”
*So be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and handed himself over for us as a sacrificial offering to God for a fragrant aroma. Immorality or any impurity or greed must not even be mentioned among you, as is fitting among holy ones, no obscenity or silly or suggestive talk, which is out of place, but instead, thanksgiving. Be sure of this, that no immoral or impure or greedy person, that is, an idolater, has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. Let no one deceive you with empty arguments, for because of these things the wrath of God is coming upon the disobedient. So do not be associated with them.
For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light, for light produces every kind of goodness and righteousness and truth. Try to learn what is pleasing to the Lord. Take no part in the fruitless works of darkness; rather expose them, for it is shameful even to mention the things done by them in secret; but everything exposed by the light becomes visible, for everything that becomes visible is light. Therefore, it says: “Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will give you light.” Watch carefully then how you live, not as foolish persons but as wise, making the most of the opportunity, because the days are evil*. Eph. 5:1-16
Don’t imagine that the “progressives” are inventing anything or suggesting anything the saints have never considered before. We have been here. The holy ones have taken several laps around the farm and gone past this area in the ages that we have passed through before. We have been warned, and we ought not be so arrogant and foolish as to believe that we are above the temptations and thinking we have been warned away from by those who have gone before us and learned these lessons through hard experience.
