Growing Up in a Pro Gay Society?

[UbiCaritas]

I disagree with this and think that the OP’s question is reasonable. How *do you *raise children in such a society when you can’t protect them? This ideological pressure is everywhere: the media, entertainment, schools and universities. Friends, neighbours, family members - do they have the same values or will they corrupt children with their ideas? There is no island, unless children live in complete isolation. And what will happen when they take a peek outside the bubble? How will they react to the world and its strange ways?

I’d like to hear some good suggestions on how to handle this and how to install good values in children, because very soon I will be back in the same situation. And I’m dreading it.

We intend to raise our kids through teaching them the truth with charity, and, most of all, through our actions. Having spent a fair amount of time in the arts, I have a number of gay friends. They know I’m Catholic, and I’ve had a number of very honest discussions with them about our differences in belief about homosexuality and so on. However, we’re able to remain friends while disagreeing on things that are so fundamental because we founded our relationships the way that all relationships should be founded: on respect. Interestingly enough, one of my friends “came out” to me before he did in general because he knew that I would not, as a number of the religious students (generally Southern Baptists or fundamentalists) at my school did–ie, by telling him that he was going to hell for having homosexual inclinations. When he asked what I believed, I explained the Church’s teaching, which he listened to and, in fact, agreed was quite logical: I mean, one doesn’t teach that a person’s going to hell for being tempted to overindulge in chocolate, being tempted to be rude to that other driver, being tempted to commit adultery, so why should a temptation itself doom a person to hell? (Obviously, the key point here is “temptation” versus action, a distinction which he appreciated.)

Our kids will see us live, as well as we can, marriage as it should be, and will be taught that marriage must be based on respect, trust, and selflessness, and that love is an action and not merely a feeling. They will see us treat our gay friends with love and respect without compromising our beliefs; a gay couple, for example, would not sleep in the same room in our house for the same reason that an unmarried heterosexual couple wouldn’t: they aren’t married, we believe that sexual activity is to be reserved for marriage, and while we love them no matter what they do, we don’t allow certain behaviors under our roof. We’ll address each matter as it arises in an age-appropriate fashion. To be honest, a lot of kids don’t question what they see around them. My parents had at least one openly gay couple as friends, and I didn’t realize until I was in my early teens that they were gay; I just knew that they lived together.

Yes, despite all this, some people will label children brought up this way as “homophobic.” Well, others will label children brought up to believe that abortion is wrong as “anti-women.” What others call us doesn’t matter. What we are and how we live does, and that’s a pretty important lesson for kids to learn.

 

[EasterJoy]

This is what the Church teaches:

*Chastity and homosexuality

2357 Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity,140 tradition has always declared that "homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered."141 They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.

2358 The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God’s will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.

2359 Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.*

It will not be long before children realize that a person who actually lives the Gospel will be opposed in this world. You’ll be opposed for simultaneously opposing homosexual acts while insisting that homosexuals are valued by God just as much as anyone else. You’ll be opposed for opposing abortion and trying to get health care for people who need it and can’t afford it. You’ll be opposed for insisting on justice for the poor while simultaneously saying that individual property rights are real and have to be respected, even for the very rich. You’ll be opposed for saying that sex outside marriage is wrong and that people who bear children outside of marriage should be supported and valued instead of marginalized. You’ll be opposed for insisting that people should dress with modesty while simultaneously insisting that no one has a right to look down on someone as a person for being or dressing like a prostitute.

This is just one of many things about being a Christian in a fallen world that is hard. You teach your children that God’s love involves going through a narrow gate, a gate that no one finds by steering as hard to the left or as hard to the right as one can go. Love requires pushing beyond yourself, advocating for moral behavior while remembering that the moral code is there to make people the free sons and daughters of God, not to burden them down with shame.

The truth is not easy to live and it is not easy to teach, but when you put all the false ideas next to the truth, you see that it is much better to both suffer for and find your joy in the truth than to try to do it in false ideas. I guess that’s what you teach.

 

[gardenswithkids]

Very well said, I quote your whole post because it bears repeating, and I’m totally incapable of cropping quotes.

I think the reason Catholics, and others opposed to same sex marriage, are seen as homophobic, is because they make no attempt to control heterosexual behaviour by legal means. Where are the demands that serial divorce and remarriage be made illegal?

Democracies function on the principle of the separation of church and state. Homosexuals want the ability to participate in a voluntary, civil contract, we choose to call marriage. If it helped things, why not just call civil marriages, civil unions. If I were to marry only in a civil court, the church would not consider me “married”, and I’d be living in a state of sin. Why do we claim that a civil act degrades a sacrament, when there is no link between the two? Does the fact that, let’s say, Newt Gingrich, has been married three times degrade my marriage, or the sacrament? Then why would homosexual civil marriages have any impact on the sacredness of a religious sacrament?

Thanks for your kind words about my previous post. :curtsey:
In the past our culture did attempt to control heterosexual behavior through laws–but we lost many of those fights long ago. Contraception was once outlawed. Abortion was once outlawed. Divorce was only allowed in limited circumstances if they presented with serious reason for it. There were sometimes even legal attempts to limit sex outside of marriage. (In the 1920’s, the famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright was arrested for vacationing with a woman who was not his wife!)

Trying to be consistent will not save us from being called names; we’ll just be called other names too. Those of us who oppose killing humans in the womb are often called “extremist”. Name calling is one of the major tactics our opposition uses to intimidate us.

Another tactic is the promoting the misuse and misunderstanding of the principle of “separation of church and state”. That doesn’t mean we cannot apply godly principles to our laws. The Ten Commandments forbid stealing, but laws against theft make sense in a civilized society for other reasons. Likewise, the laws for civil marriage make sense for more than religious reasons.

One of the major purposes of civil marriage is it serves to protect women and children. In the aftermath of the rise of divorce and out of wedlock birth, we see statistics that still prove that to be true. Married women are better off financial compared to single mothers. Children raised by both their father and mother do better on a variety of measurements. Changes to the civil marriage laws that have already taken place (like no-fault divorce) have hurt women and children, so it’s logical to suspect further changes may also hurt women and children.