Coming to a girls' restroom near you: boys!

Here in California, Assembly Bill 1266 has been signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown. On January 1, students in this state who self-identify as transgendered are free to "use facilities consistent with his or her gender identity, irrespective of the gender listed on the pupil's records." Thanks, Jerry.

To see the trouble we're about to enjoy, look to Colorado, fast becoming the California of the Mountain Time Zone.

Parents in Colorado are pushing back against a public high school's decision to allow a boy who sometimes identifies as a girl to use the girls' restrooms. Of course, they're being vilified by LBGTQ advocates as hateful and ignorant. Nothing untoward would ever happen if such a policy became widespread. Nope. Nothing to see here. Move along, hater.

And yet... whatever happened to the indignation over being pushed around by a tiny but powerful minority — all that "We are the 99%" stuff —during Occupy Wall Street? Back then, I thought we were being told that the perceived welfare and will of the 99% trumped the right of the wealthiest 1% to keep their wealth. 'Occupy' was much praised in media and academia, so this principle must be right. [For the humor-impaired, this is sarcasm].

But see what happens when a different 99% insists that its welfare and will should hold sway on a subject that the Left doesn't like? That's different. You're trampling on a minority's rights, they say, and that cannot stand. How is it different, you ask? It just is, you'll be told.

Nothing is ever about logic or consistent principles with such people. It's all about power. And they're very close to putting a lock on that.

E for Effort

In the wake of Pope Francis' ill-considered off-the-cuff remarks ("... who am I to judge?) to the press on his way home from Rio, the popular blogging Deacon, Greg Kandra, has the right idea about expressing the Church's teaching about homosexuality more clearly. But in the CNS video I link to here, even his version seems to wander a bit.

Unless I'm reading my Catechism of the Catholic Church wrongly, it all comes down to these bullet points:

1. One kind of sexual relations is pleasing to God: the kind that happens between one man and one woman in the context of the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony. Nothing else.
2. Any other kind of sexual relations — heterosexual, homosexual, or what-have-you-sexual — displeases Him. Not because He wants to spoil all our fun, but because He knows how those things trap us in distortions of our true human nature, which He understands far more profoundly than we do.
3. So, since we have a duty to God to resist any inclination to displease Him, we have a duty to resist any inclination to have some other kind of sex, no matter what it is, who (or what) it's with, or how good it feels.

Now, one may not agree with those teachings. Many Americans don't. Heck, even a lot of baptized Catholics certainly behave as if they don't. But, when put briefly and clearly like this, at least we're clear about what we're defending, and what we're not.

Bob Schieffer's blind spot

This post from Deacon Greg Kandra's blog takes note of the surprising ignorance of veteran reporter Bob Schieffer of the coercion that's already taking place against those who don't support soi-disant gay marriage.

So if you've encountered growing support for the redefinition of marriage among your Catholic friends, you might ask them whether they know about it, too. Because this isn't a fight about freedom; it's a fight about coercion in support of a lifestyle, and making that coercion acceptable in the public mind.

One brave woman

Aborted This Way

Over the years, gay-rights groups have successfully convinced quite a few people that they are "born this way." That is, their same-sex attraction is genetically determined, and therefore morally unassailable. But they've also routinely allied themselves with the pro-abortion groups that regard an unborn child as its mother's absolute property, to be disposed of at will.

Now, with the imminent prospect of prenatal testing to reveal whether children in the womb have the "gay gene," the table is set for a really delicious example of the way that evil always ends up contradicting itself.

Consider this situation, which can only be a few years away:

Through such testing, an expectant mother finds out that the child she is bearing will be genetically inclined to same-sex attraction. But she doesn't want to bring such a child into the world, for reasons that seem good to her. Does her "right to choose," which the Sexual Left insists is absolute, allow her to abort that probably-gay child?

"Wait!" her gay-rights friend will cry. "There's nothing wrong with same-sex attraction. You can't do that! It's immoral."

"And who are you to say?" replies the mother. "Besides, it doesn't matter. If I want to abort my child for any reason, I have the right to do it. Anyway, that's what you said last year, when I was carrying that Down-syndrome child that I ended up aborting."

"Okay, then!" says the gay-rights friend. "Morality aside, it ought to be illegal to abort for that reason. You're discriminating against a gay person. It makes no difference that they're not born yet."

"Just try to make it illegal, buster," says the mother. "I don't want to carry a gay kid to term. You can't make me."

And at this point, both shout "I'll see you in court!"

In the long, vile multi-course dinner that the muddle of modern evils has been, this is one dish I'm really looking forward to.

I'll have mine with mustard, please.

"The so-called Defense of Marriage Act"

That's how President Obama is reported to have referred to the Defense of Marriage Act while greeting gay-rights groups at the White House reception to celebrate LGBT Pride Month.

I don't know how the battle lines could be more definitively drawn. The President has made it very clear that he wants "marriage" to take on a new meaning that is radically opposed to the Catholic Church's teachings -- and to the common understanding of marriage that prevailed until quite recently. We in the Catholic Church, here and now, are the last line of defense of one of the pillars of civilization. As usual.

This must be our hour.

Sour Milk

Did you know that Harvey Milk ran interference for Jim Jones (of Jonestown infamy) and helped stymie investigations into his cult? Neither did I. Our betters have done a great job of portraying Milk as just a smiling public servant. This article at California Catholic Daily exposes the hushed-up connection, and has links to a useful historical website.

The article points out that the recent hagiographic biopic Milk somehow forgot to mention this connection. Worth remembering, as you read about secular film critics complaining about -- gasp! -- historical "inaccuracies" in the new movie For Greater Glory.

Which one ought to raise Elijah?

Whatever you think of Michelle Bachmann, she didn't deserve this underhanded "gotcha" at one of her book signings, perpetrated by a gay parent using her 8-year-old son as a tool:

Read about the incident here, and then tell me: in whose household would 8-year-old Elijah be raised better -- his manipulative mother's, or Michelle Bachmann's? If you need help, look at the big effort Ms. Bachmann makes to get close enough to Elijah to hear his tiny voice, and the patient, motherly expression on her face before the trap is sprung. Then examine the gloating that Elijah's mom indulges in, when she posts her video at HuffPo (link at site above).

You can always get them back

How perennial sin is! The more history I read, the more it seems that there's hardly any evil in our modern world that the Church hasn't had to tackle many times already, in its past.

One of the most telling moments in C. S. Lewis' Narnia books comes in Prince Caspian, when a ghostly old woman hears the Narnians refer to the White Witch, who appeared to have been killed at the end of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. She scoffs: "[W]ho ever heard of a witch that really died? You can always get them back."

And we do.

The wrong side of WHAT history?

Via CNS comes this tidbit that should be of interest to Catholics:

Thirteen U.S. senators who oppose the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) participated in a video for the pro-homosexual “It Gets Better” project, in which they encourage lesbian and gay youth to persevere and be optimistic about the future. In discussing the release of the video on Wednesday, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said, “DOMA, folks, is on the wrong side of history.”

Would that be the history in which every society has defined marriage as the union of a man and a woman? The history in which homosexual behavior has almost never been encouraged, let alone honored with the mantle of marriage? The history of two thousand years of consistent teaching of the Catholic Church on homosexual behavior? In case you were actually wondering about that, the answers to those questions is No. The history they have in mind is the recent history they have themselves concocted, the history in which every shred of sexual restraint with which societies have shielded themselves must go, because it's -- well -- so old-fashioned.

The senators featured in the video are: Al Franken (D-Minn.), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Mark Udall, (D-Colo.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.)

Please, all you Catholics who have cozied up to Democratic politicians because of their support for your favorite "social justice" issues, remember all those D's. No R's, only D's. And for fellow Californian Catholics, remember that, please, the next time Dianne Feinstein comes up for re-election.

A note for non-Catholics:

The Catholic Church does NOT teach that people with homosexual inclinations are worthless human beings who ought to kill themselves. It teaches that such people should do the same thing as everyone else who is tempted toward some evil (that is, all of us): just don't do it.

In contrast with this humane recognition of a transcendent worth in all human beings that's independent of their behavior, the suicides that are deplored in the Senators' video are just what's to be expected from a secular culture that ties people's entire identities to their sexuality. To these Senators and the millions who support them, gays aren't really people; they're labelled counters in a political game of power.

Just what you'd expect from the party whose leader doesn't want his daughters to be "punished" with an unexpected child who interferes with their plans.

A witty riposte to Apple from the Manhattan Declaration

UPDATE:

When I later viewed this video at YouTube, I was appalled at the nasty comments from the LGBTQ etc. side -- and the number of them -- and so I did what I swore I'd never do: I posted a YouTube comment myself. Don't know if it will be "accepted" by the powers that be, so here it is:

The LGBTQ etc. "community" wants only one thing: to suppress ANY form of objection, no matter how measured, to their lifestyle choices. Their agitation against the MD app demonstrates that very well. And since when is it "hateful" to call someone else's behavior immoral? Gandhi did it; MLK did it; the antiwar movement did it; and so did the gay movement. Did these all therefore "hate" their opponents? Should their "hateful" opinions have been silenced, too?

Gay activists know that if they can effectively intimidate and control the iPhone App Store, they can censor what iPhone users can see -- and that population is a pretty large and influential one.

We ignore this fight at our peril.

How gay marriage hurts heterosexual marriage

The Purple Heart is a military decoration of venerable age in our still-young republic. It signifies that the wearer has been wounded in the service of his country.
Imagine, if you will, that you are a soldier who has received this decoration, and you are proud to wear it.
One day, a judge decides that it's unfairly discriminatory to award this medal only to those who were actually wounded, and decrees that it must henceforth be distributed to every person who has ever served in a branch of the armed forces, even to those who were discharged dishonorably.
Might you not feel that the distinction awarded to you for your sacrifice was now devalued?
Now imagine that the people react to this judicial decision by formally reconfirming the Purple Heart in its traditional purpose, not once but twice. On both occasions, judges declare this expression of the will of the people unconstitutional.
The next time somebody asks you "How could gay marriage possibly harm heterosexual marriage?" it might help to ask them if they've heard of the Purple Heart.