"Clear thinking about moral truth flounders on the rocks of relativism and subjectivism." - R.J. Neuhaus

Who told you you were naked?

Who told you you were gay?  I thought of that stuff this morning in my silent time after prayer.

Who told you you were gay?   God didn't.  Nature didn't.  Before I knew what it meant - before I ever even heard the word homosexual - someone called me a 'filthy little homosexual'.  I had to look up the word at the time, and I still didn't think it applied to me.  Later, Life magazine - or was it Look? - did some articles on homosexuals in NYC - what they did, where they hung out, and so on.  Then I got it - sort of.  They were gay.  Men who had sex with males were gay.  I just thought it was lust - though I wouldn't have been familiar with that term either - so I would have thought it was 'dirty'.

So who told you you were gay?  Like I said, it wasn't God.

My penance after confession yesterday was to read the beginning of Mark's Gospel.  I came across an incident in the first chapter which captured my attention: when Jesus healed a man ... a Demoniac - a person believed to have an evil spirit.  Mark says he had an unclean spirit - who shrieked Christ had "come to destroy us".  The shriek was phrased as a question - though the unclean spirit said "I know who you are!"  Unclean spirits recognize Christ - they know him.  Throughout history they have deluded, duped people into believing they were good spirits - even angels of light.

Though they know God and Scripture, they don't want us to know him.  Rather, they want to convince us that Christ has come to destroy - not save.  To destroy our freedom, our presumed autonomy.  Pondering that, I immediately recalled how Adam and Eve hid from God because of their nakedness ... They were afraid, ashamed - before their Creator, their Father.  Yet God made them, formed them, he knew them.  How strange.

So who told them they were naked?

Who told you you were ...

Why are we afraid God will destroy our freedom?  That he will deprive us of our choices?

God's plan poses no threat to man's genuine freedom; on the contrary, the acceptance of God's plan is the only way to affirm that freedom. Veritatis splendor

What is truth?

In a radically individualistic culture, we do not discern and obey what is objectively true. Rather, each of us decides what is “true for me.” We create the truth. - John Neuhaus

I'm thinking ... I'm thinking ... I like to think about this stuff.

Why do people say they are gay?

Who told you you were gay?  What does that even mean?  Why has that become a source of pride?  To be accused of being gay, or a filthy homosexual was a source of shame... now it is proclaimed as a source of pride.

Isn't that itself disordered?  Disorder is rooted, springs from, original sin.

So.  Perhaps we can understand a little better what some people are trying to hide, as it were ...

Therefore special concern and pastoral attention should be directed towards those who have this condition, lest they be led to believe that the living out of this orientation in homosexual activity is a morally acceptable option. It is not”

[...] an overly benign interpretation was given to the homosexual condition itself, some going so far as to call it neutral or even good”, the letter goes on to clarify: “Although the particular inclination of the homosexual person is not a sin, it is a more or less strong tendency ordered towards an intrinsic moral evil; and thus the inclination itself must be seen as an objective disorder. - Some considerations ... CDF

Like I said - I'm thinking ...

The words of Genesis 3:10, "I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself," provide evidence of the first experience of man's shame with regard to his Creator—a shame that could also be called "cosmic".

However, this "cosmic shame"—if it is possible to perceive its features in man's total situation after original sin—makes way in the biblical text for another form of shame. It is the shame produced in humanity itself. It is caused by the deep disorder in that reality on account of which man, in the mystery of creation, was God's image. He was God's image both in his personal "ego" and in the interpersonal relationship, through the original communion of persons, constituted by the man and the woman together. - JP II

Perhaps gay men hide their shame - in other men?

Perhaps lesbians hide their shame - in other women?

Thus they can be like gods and decide for themselves what is right, what is wrong, and what they are?

As Fr. Neuhaus noted: "Clear thinking about moral truth flounders on the rocks of relativism and subjectivism."

Ain't that the truth.

"But wisdom is vindicated by all her children." - Luke 7:35