Teaching Kids the Truth About Marriage

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Exactly!!! So why teach them that anyone has the authority to Marry people of the same gender?

What we teach them has influence to their fundamentals of understanding. It’s a huge responsibility.
 
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rcwitness said:
Matthew 19

Jesus said… “Have you not read that from the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female’ and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, no human being must separate.”
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I fail to see the word “marriage” in this quote.

No one is arguing that the church has a different definition of this word than secular persons do.
 
If it was true, then why does the Church grant an annulment for a ssm?
 
Then you fail to understand. Just as you liked that @Qwertygirl said that the State has authority to marry same gender couples. Its anti-Catholic. It’s not true marriage, and you know it. You just don’t want to stand up for the Truth in certain instances.
 
rcwitness said:
If it was true, then why does the Church grant an annulment for a ssm?
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RC, the whole world doesn’t work from the same definitions as the Catholic Church. The point I am making is that teaching your children ONLY the Catholic way of things is maybe not the best route. By all means, Catholic parents can an should teach the children about what the Church says on these issues. However, that is just one slice of the pie if you want your kids to know how the world works so they can live in it with truth and understanding. Not only should you teach your kids what you believe and what your religion teaches, you should spend a life long conversation with them about why it is so important to you. But this shouldn’t be to the exclusion of talking truthfully about people and practices outside of your faith.

Typically, when my kid asked me about things that go on in the world that I don’t agree with, it opened the door to some of the best conversations. I shared what I knew on the issue she was asking about. Then I would share what I thought about it. Then I would ask her what she thought about it. It always made for rich discussions, often about morality and how to be the best we can be.
 
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rcwitness said:
Then you fail to understand. Just as you liked that @Qwertygirl said that the State has authority to marry same gender couples. Its anti-Catholic. It’s not true marriage, and you know it. You just don’t want to stand up for the Truth in certain instances.
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LOL. I think we simply disagree on the presentation of reality, however it’s been twisted. Reality is that the courts have decided to take the word marriage and change it’s meaning because the (quite irrelevant to marriage) social ramifications were already in place.

A miscarriage is a “spontaneous abortion” bleeding during pregnancy is charted as “threatened abortion”. A D&C for a failed miscarriage is a surgical abortion. So you aren’t even accurate when you say you’re “against abortion” What you mean is that you’re against life-ending surgical abortion.

I mean, unless you’re somehow saying that you’d like to end the ability to surgically remove an already dead baby. That’s still called an abortion.
 
Again, the context of this discussion is a 5 year old child. The simple answer is “no, marriage is only possible for a man and woman. Some people disagree with Jesus, like @Qwertygirl and @Xanthippe_Voorhees, but Jesus says it’s not a true marriage.”
 
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I don’t think you are giving five year olds enough credit for their intellectual capacity. Remember, most 12 year olds remember a lot about the conversations they had when they were 5. They will catch on that you are only teaching them the part you want them to know.
 
I think even some of the most intelligent people don’t know the Truth.

It isnt about intelligence, but maturity to discern right and wrong.
 
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Between the ages of 4-7 I remember understanding quite a bit, in fact, there were many things that occurred in my early childhood that I remember clearly and understood what was going on. This includes the felling of the Berlin wall and the stories of those who had been trapped inside. It was clearly beyond “good guy/bad guy”.

It’s so demeaning to children to think they aren’t capable of understanding.
 
Understanding what?

That the Jesus says a man and another man cannot get married? I believe Children can understand this.

But when a father or mother try to deceive them, that poor child is put in an unfortunate place.
 
I will say, too, that I clearly remember having, at that age, a real sense of when someone was being intellectually dishonest with me. I didn’t know what it was, other than just a vibe I got that I was being snowed. I guess nowadays we would call it a BS meter. It was instinctual, not really anything anyone taught me. It led me to not trust people who weren’t fully truthful with me. Not a bad thing, all-in-all.
 
He didn’t say it in the negative, but rather in the positive, recorded in the Matthew 19 passage I quoted.
 
It talks about a man and a woman. It says nothing about two men. Incidentally, it also doesn’t mention marriage.

Don’t tell your kids Jesus said something he didn’t.
 
Clearly we have two different viewpoints regarding the value of being honest with children. I am not going to convince you to my way of thinking. You sure as heck aren’t going to convince me to your way of thinking. I do want to be clear about one thing. I don’t want to dismiss the importance of parents teaching their faith to their children. It is so important. That isn’t what I have been debating. There are different ways of teaching your kids, and I just disagree with the method you propose.

With that, I think I am going to bow out. It seems fruitless to continue on. I enjoyed the dialogue, though. Thanks.
 
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I just told my 8 yr old about the State saying a man and a man can be married.

She said “I don’t understand. That’s weird.”
 
Sometimes it is best to wait until they ask the question. It is sort of weird that you would just tell her that out of the clear blue. Maybe it isn’t relevant to her experiences, yet.
 
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