Don't Ask, Don't Care....About God's Commandments

In an article written for the Institute for Policy Studies, the same extreme-left organization which recognized Father J. Bryan Hehir of the Boston Archdiocese as one of the "cornerstones" of its Washington School where the dissident priest taught a course on liberation theology entitled "Matthew, Marx, Luke and John" which focused on Nicaragua, William A. Collins writes:

"The glacial progress toward equality for gay Americans offers some revealing looks at our society. One is the weakening hold of religion, Roman Catholicism in particular. Until recently, church bias against homosexuals was plainly understood, unspoken, unchallenged, and accepted.

No longer. That underlying bulwark of morality is now widely perceived as bigotry. For example, at Jesuit-run Marquette University a great uproar ensued when the school revoked a deanship offered to a lesbian professor. In other days not only would there never have been an offer, but she probably would never have become a professor. And surely faculty and students would never have raised such a howl.
Other religions are in turmoil too. Episcopalians are breaking into separate churches over the issue, and while northern Methodists lean toward allowing gay clergy, Southerners control the votes. Lutherans are similarly divided. Mormons of course remain officially opposed, but church fathers (there are no church mothers) recently supported an anti-discrimination ordinance to protect gays in Salt Lake City. Black churches, however, fear that homosexuality threatens the basic family, and in Africa churches have succeeded in making same-sex relationships a serious felony.

Then there's our military. The Commander-in-Chief, Defense Secretary and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs have now called for repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. But the individual service chiefs aren't so sure. Naturally all this internal tension gives gay-intolerant politicians room to maneuver. So with such rampant indecision still on the loose, Defense Secretary Robert Gates is simply changing procedures making it much harder to enforce the law that ejects gays from the service.

Social tolerance seems to be advancing quite nicely without us in other countries. Most Western militaries think we're kidding about banning gays. They never could understand Americans anyway. And now several Catholic countries are loosening up their wedding rules. Portugal lately became the sixth European nation to sanctify gay marriage, and Argentina just broke the ice in South America by court decree. It seems that its constitution, like many of our own state constitutions, contains an inconvenient "equal rights" clause. Mexico City has actually voted to allow same-sex marriage. More sleepless nights in the Vatican.

Back here at home, these social battles rage on. California, which includes many progressive-voting communities, actually approved a gay marriage ban in 2008. Citing the Constitution's guarantee of equal rights, a federal district court recently overturned the ban, but that decision doesn't alter the population's basic sentiment. The final outcome will probably be decided by our Supreme Court, which is dominated by a conservative majority.

Meanwhile, most lawmakers still seem convinced that in their hearts the "silent majority" of voters oppose gay rights. Whether these public passions stem from fear of sin or "otherness," or real concern for "family values" is hard to measure. What can be measured is that this icy grip on a big chunk of our population is gradually thawing and that automatic hard line opponents of equality are now faced with meaningful political opposition."


It says much that Father J. Bryan Hehir, a Roman Catholic priest who is supposed to adhere to the Church's teaching, would associate himself with a leftist movement which advances the radical homosexual agenda while mocking the Vatican.  And make no mistake about it, from the very beginning IPS has been advancing the homosexual agenda.  At its website, the organization freely acknowledges that Rita Mae Brown wrote her "path-breaking lesbian coming-of-age novel Rubyfruit Jungle while serving on the staff of IPS in the 1970s.

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in its document entitled "Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons," recalls the distinction between homosexual tendencies and homosexual practices:

"Although the particular inclination of the homosexual person is not a sin, it is a more or less strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil; and thus the inclination itself must be seen as an objective disorder." (No. 3).  And while condemning crimes and other hateful acts against homosexual persons, the Letter explains that these crimes cannot serve as a pretext to justify homosexuality.

And, in its document entitled "Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons," the CDF emphasizes that, "Sacred Scripture condemns homosexual acts 'as a serious depravity....This judgment of Scripture does not of course permit us to conclude that all those who suffer from this anomaly are personally responsible for it, but it does attest to the fact that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.'  This same moral judgment is found in many Christian writers of the first centuries 'and is unanimously accepted by Catholic Tradition.'" (No. 4).

The real question is: is this same moral judgment accepted by Father J. Bryan Hehir?  If so, what do we make of this?

William Collins, like others who have bought into homosexual agitprop, is attempting to paint Christian opposition toward homosexuality (and especially the perennial teaching of the Church founded by Jesus Christ) as bigotry and intolerance. As I said in a previous post: "..the same radical homosexual activists who continually cry for more "tolerance" are anything but tolerant. This is a spiritual war. The homosexual movement is not a civil rights movement. It is an attempt at moral revolution. An attempt to change people's view of homosexuality.


Writing in the Chicago Free Press, even homosexual activist Paul Varnell admitted this. He wrote, "The fundamental controverted issue about homosexuality is not discrimination, hate crimes or domestic partnerships, but the morality of homosexuality. Even if gays obtain non-discrimination laws, hate crimes law and domestic partnership benefits, those can do little to counter the underlying moral condemnation which will continue to fester beneath the law and generate hostility, fuel hate crimes, support conversion therapies, encourage gay youth suicide and inhibit the full social acceptance that is our goal. On the other hand, if we convince people that homosexuality is fully moral, then all their inclination to discriminate, engage in gay-bashing or oppose gay marriage disappears. Gay youths and adults could readily accept themselves. So the gay movement, whether we acknowledge it or not, is not a civil rights movement, not even a sexual liberation movement, but a moral revolution aimed at changing people's view of homosexuality." (Paul Varnell, "Defending Our Morality," Chicago Free Press, Aug 16, 2000, See here).

Related reading here

And here