By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK
Am I sure it is a devious plea? I am. But you can judge. Let’s take a look at it. The “plea” was made in an ad sponsored by the Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams furniture stores. I had never heard of these stores before the company took out the full-page ad in The New York Times on April 13. The headline was, “A Plea to Pope Francis: On Behalf of Homeless LGBT Youth.”
It turns out that there are quite a few of the stores across the country, usually in the upscale urban areas favored by people in their 20s and 30s with some money to spend on trendy decor for their apartments and co-ops. The company’s web page boasts of its commitment to activism in the name of eco-friendly causes and its understanding of social justice. The homosexual agenda is high on the list.
The Times’ ad — which, unless the Times gave Gold + Williams a break, cost more than $20,000 — called for donations to the Ali Forney Center in New York. It was written by Carl Siciliano, Air Forney’s executive director. Siciliano tells us he is a “former Benedictine monk” and a “gay man who has spent over 30 years serving the homeless, first as a member of the Catholic Worker Movement, and now as the founder and executive director of the Ali Forney Center, America’s largest center for homeless lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender youth based in New York City.” (Forney was a transgender prostitute murdered in New York in 1997.)
Siciliano calls for the Pope to be compassionate and to look with “God’s mercy” on the plight of “kids” who have suffered a “violation against love.”
Siciliano blames the Church’s teaching that “homosexual conduct is a sin, and that being gay is disordered” for the “devastating consequences of religious rejection of LGBT youths” by their parents, a rejection, he argues, that results in them being “driven them from their homes.” He points to a “recent study” that found “parents with high religious involvement were significantly less accepting of their LGBT children.” These rejected “LGBT youths make up 40 percent of the homeless youth population in the country, despite comprising only about 5 percent of the overall youth population.” “Unwanted by their parents,” they are left to endure “hunger, cold, and sexual exploitation while homeless.”
Siciliano instructs the Pope that “Jesus Christ is never recorded as having said a word in judgment or condemnation of homosexuality or of LGBT people.” Rather, “Jesus spoke of God as a loving parent who would never abandon his children.” He calls upon Pope Francis to “recognize that the condemnation of homosexuality” is “cruel and wrong, and rooted in a primitive, obsolete understanding of human sexuality.”
As examples of young people victimized by the Church’s teaching on homosexuality, he points to a mother who threw her son out of the home, saying she would “rather see him die on the streets than live in her home if he was gay,” a young woman “whose family drove her to a forest far from her home and abandoned her, throwing her from the car, because being a lesbian made her ‘evil’,” a father “who was so disgusted by homosexuality that he threw his son out of his home and said he would kill him and bury him in the backyard if he tried to return.”
Siciliano urges the Pope to recognize that these horrors are being caused in large measure by the Church’s teachings and: “Surely God loves his children more than teachings.” He closes with an offer to the Pope “to come to the Ali Forney Center and meet the youths we serve. And I hope we can find common ground in seeking that they be protected and loved.”
What do you think? I guess one might argue that Siciliano is not being intentionally devious. It could be. Perhaps he has been led into self-righteous misguided thinking by excessive zeal for his cause. Where to begin?
First of all, it is true that Jesus never specifically condemned homosexuality. But what does that mean? There are many sins He never mentioned explicitly. Off the top of my head, I can think of abortion, genocide, racism, wife beating, despoiling the environment, drug dealing, and voter intimidation. Our Lord did not revoke the Ten Commandments; He condemned these things implicitly as part of His injunction to love God above all things and our neighbors as ourselves. He established a Church with the authority to teach in His name to deal with specific evils.
More to the point, If Jesus had intended to overthrow the Jewish people’s unequivocal understanding of the sinfulness of homosexuality, as expressed in the biblical account of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, it is hard to imagine that He would not have done so in an emphatic manner. He did not do that.
And why would Siciliano not think that the Church would condemn as vehemently as he does parents who abandoned their children because of their struggle with homosexuality? The Church has long taught that a disposition toward homosexuality is not sinful. It is what we do as a result of that disposition that matters. Homosexual acts are what raise a moral issue — and the Church’s teaching is that even those who engage in homosexual acts may not be subjectively guilty of sin if they lacked full consent of the will.
Please: Pope Francis would counsel parents with children drawn to homosexuality by pointing this out to them. He would urge them to pray and seek guidance, not to throw them from a car into the forest. Egads. Talk about cheap shots!
No doubt many of the LGBT youth that Siciliano deals with have been treated unfairly by their parents. It would be unfair to doubt his accounts without evidence to the contrary. (Of which I have none.) But we have to be fair. It is likely that some of these youths were not “thrown out” of their homes, but ran away because their parents would not permit them to act out in a promiscuous manner, perhaps in a home with younger children. There is no need to go into graphic examples.
Not all homosexuals are victims. Just a week or so back we read the headlines about the Hollywood producers who passed around young boy actors like pieces of meat at their poolside parties.
Those Hollywood dirtbags were teenagers once; they lived in someone’s home. Their parents would have been remiss in their obligations if they permitted them to “experiment with their sexuality” while living under their roofs. Siciliano tells us the young people he deals with were sexually exploited. Who does he think was doing that to them?
There is one other thing. Siciliano provides us with an example of the dishonest tactic that has been used by homosexual activists to promote their cause. Think back a couple of decades. Remember how those promoting the homosexual agenda assured us that their interest was only in “toleration” and “compassion” and an end to “gay-bashing.” They told us repeatedly that they had no intention of denying the rights or criminalizing those who held to the traditional biblical understanding of sex and marriage. They acted “offended” when anyone raised that prospect. All that the activists wanted was an end to “discrimination” in areas such as employment and housing and public accommodations, a live and let live society where the police would no longer treat homosexuals as criminals.
Now we know better. We have come a long way. We are at the point where opposition to same-sex marriage can get you fired and the Pope is being scolded and pressured to change one of the most basic and longstanding of the Church’s teachings. It is a textbook example of a bait-and-switch tactic, an intellectually dishonest con job.
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