'Heterosexuality is not a disease...'; Noted priests scold pro-abortion Cuomo

By Matt C. Abbott

From Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays, PFOX (excerpted; click here for the full commentary):

Normal sexuality – heterosexuality – is not a disease, yet legislation outlawing heterosexual counseling treats it as one. Promoted by the gay lobby, these bills take away the rights of minors to be treated for unwanted same-sex attractions by a licensed therapist. The bills usually cite a select list of mental health organizations to back up their dubious claims, choosing to ignore other organizations that say the contrary.

Regardless, no mental health association bans therapy for unwanted same-sex attractions, which is why gay activists turn to politicians to use government force against choice....

Heterosexual therapy, also known as sexual orientation change efforts (SOCE) therapy, operates like any other psychotherapy, with the therapist talking through emotional difficulties and issues the child is dealing with. Yet talk therapy toward a heterosexual outcome is being outlawed for the first time. Homosexual activists are telling parents and children that their only recourse is to falsely tell the child that he is born 'gay' and to get over it. Why would you say this to a molested child who is now sexually confused because of his experience with a homosexual predator? Or a child who had his first sexual experience with an older teen of the same gender and now wonders if he was targeted because he was perceived as being 'gay'?

What is more dangerous for children – homosexual sex or talk therapy by a licensed therapist? Recent CDC statistics demonstrate that male children are especially in danger of contracting HIV/AIDS. In 2011, an astonishing 94.9 percent of HIV diagnoses among teenage boys (13-19-years-old) were linked to homosexual ('male-to-male') sex. And parents are supposed to go along with this behavior under penalty of law?

AIDS kills, yet no one has died of heterosexual therapy. Politicians buffeted by the gay lobby and its wealthy donors must stop outlawing even the idea of normal sexuality and instead start criminalizing sodomy for minors under any circumstances or demand vigorous enforcement of existing criminal child sodomy laws. In this way, minors will be able to freely seek out licensed therapists for their unwanted same-sex attractions, sexual confusion, or trauma from homosexual encounters. Parents will no longer have to fear the gay lobby denying them the freedom to make health care decisions for their own children.

Heterosexuality is not a disease, and legislators shouldn't treat it as one.

There's no official Catholic teaching on the subject of SOCE or reparative therapy, but, if done appropriately and professionally, I don't see anything morally wrong with such therapy.

Father Richard Perozich, a priest of the Diocese of San Diego who has ministered to those with same-sex attraction, wrote in an email:

Reparative therapy is a process used by competent specialty trained psychologists and psychiatrists to address the psychological aspect of same sex attraction and homosexual expression in some people. The degree of healing of the sexual wound depends in part on the competency of the therapist and the cooperation of the client. Among those clients with competent therapists, realistic results have been freedom from obsessive sexual thoughts about members of their own sex, freedom from sexually acting out, and the subsequent normal development of normal opposite sex attraction.

Sexual development begins early in life. Most people develop without a homosexual wound, although it is reported that about two percent of people in Western societies develop a homosexual wound. Dr. William Consiglio describes six stages in homosexual development in his book Homosexual No More as such: Low Self-Esteem (LSE), Gender Emptiness (GE), Gender Attraction (GA), Sexual Attraction (SA), Homosexual Re-enforcement (HR) and Homosexual Identity (HI). The therapist and client will have to work through these stages.

In a 1998 article entitled 'A Culture of Inverted Sexuality,' author Patrick Fagan compared contraception with homosexuality and used this construct for both behaviors. He stated that both behaviors are the 'severing of the sexual act from the prime end of that act, and from its fundamental natural function: the begetting of the child. That severance changes the focus of the sexual act and in doing so changes the adults who so act, both in their own psychological dispositions and in their interpersonal relations. From being ultimately 'other focused,' sexual mores become 'self focused'; from extroversion, sexual affairs move toward introversion; from hetero-focused they become auto-focused.

'Homosexuality is regarded as one of the systems developed by individuals to organize experiences and expressions of conflicting and painful feeling, and the system serves as a containment of deeper anxieties, and offers for the individual a modus vivendi. The system is not just an object choice, but a long standing way of relating, is part of a person's character development and far more complex than the notion of it being part of object choice. It is important to distinguish homosexual identity and homosexual behavior. The presence of homosexuality, if conflictual or repressed, could give rise to symptoms such as anxiety, social inhibitions, or to sexual dysfunction such as impotence or frigidity.'

A human person consists of varying inseparable aspects, all of which work one upon the other toward integration, or, unfortunately, disintegration of the person: biological, psychological (experiential), emotional, social, spiritual, ethical. If reparative therapy is going to work, in my opinion, all these aspects need to be addressed beyond the psychological experience and early memories of a person with same-sex attraction. A competent therapist would address all these with other partners competent in those fields toward an integration of the person to heal the sexual wound.

To reiterate, Catholic teaching on homosexuality is as follows (from the Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraphs 2357 to 2359):

Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that 'homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.' They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.

The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God's will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord's Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.

Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.

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New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a staunchly pro-abortion "Catholic," caused a bit of a stir in recent days when he made remarks indicating that pro-life conservatives aren't welcome in New York.

Well, he has since backpedaled – kinda' sorta.' (Source)

Father Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life, wrote in an email:

What we don't need any more of in New York – or anywhere else, for that matter – are public servants who can't tell the difference between serving the public and killing the public. What exactly does the governor have against protecting the youngest children in the state?

Father John Trigilio Jr., president of the Confraternity of Catholic Clergy, wrote in an email:

Another question that arises is about those who defend traditional marriage as being between one man and one woman. Holding that belief does not make you 'anti-gay'; it makes you pro-traditional family. The family is built on marriage; hence, married couples need and deserve some recognition and support even when not extended to those who are single.

Marriage is rooted in the Judeo-Christian tradition and natural moral law as a permanent and faithful commitment of one man and one woman to live as husband and wife. Two men or two women, three ladies and one man, and any other combination may be a voluntary association, but is not marriage.

Is that extreme? Does defending the right of a human being from being unjustly killed in the womb extreme? Is putting an end to racial discrimination and racial segregation extreme? If yes, then these 'extremists' must be tolerated nevertheless because they are constitutional and they are morally right.

© Matt C. Abbott