The Way Forward After the California LGBT Education Law

William B. May, head of the San Francisco-based Catholics for the Common Good, had this to say about recent passage of the LGBT education law in California: “We’re disappointed that the governor signed it. It’s a troubling precedent for politicians to dictate what’s in textbooks.”

I completely agree with May that the new law amounts to anti-Christian indoctrination that attempts to set homosexuals up as role models against the wishes of parents, and against the will of those who in the public school system that might conscientiously object to such content. This is an important step forward for the gay agenda of transforming the very foundations of Western society.

However, if this tact, the “get the politicians out of our classrooms” slogan, is a basis for the criticism, it is far off center and will fail. Our opposition will simply point out that if the involvement of politicians in education is the fear in this case, then President Bush's No Child Left Behind legislation did the exact same thing, but on much more massive scale, inducing schools to reduce curricula to emphasize only math and reading.

It's not very realistic, either. The government has always influenced and made decisions regarding what is in or not in the public school's curricula, and that will probably never change (nor, in principle, should it). The "get politicians out of our kid's school" slogan is an irrational red herring, especially when we are talking about public schools.

We have to make the criticism hinge on two principles.

The first principle is that objectively the homosexual act is contrary to nature and is immoral, and those who have same sex attraction are suffering from a disorder. No, this is not politically correct. But by ignoring this obvious truth, has any ground been gained? Apparently not. What is gaining traction by ignoring this truth is that our opposition is succeeding in convincing the American public that homosexuality is good and natural. By announcing this truth, no doubt, we will be branded as intolerant and bigoted, but they called Our Blessed Lord worse. We cannot fail to tell the truth, even when it is out of season, especially now that it has been legislated that an untruth be taught in the California public schools.

The second principle is that parents must take their role as the primary educators of their children in earnest. It isn't so much that new legislation or politicians are attacking the Catholic principle that parents are the primary educators; it's that parents, themselves, are abrogating their responsibility in this regard. That the parent is the primary educator of their children has always been the traditional teaching of the Catholic Church, but unfortunately, most Catholic parents simply don't believe it, or, at least, they don’t act in a way that indicates they do.

I'm not saying that all Catholic parents should start homeschooling. What I mean is that parents need to re-organize their lives and careers so that they can be present, at least to some degree and in some capacity, while their children are being educated. If all parents were to show up in their children's classrooms for just one hour a week, the government wouldn't dare to pass legislation like this. As it is, legislation like this passes because the public school bureaucrats, liberal teachers unions, LGBT lobbyists and liberal politicians don't have to face a concerted force of parents actually present in the class room, who are going to hold these same individuals accountable for the content of what they are teaching and the effectiveness of their methodology.

Reflecting on these two principles invites an examination of conscience. If the LGBT agenda is now threatening to destroy the institutions of marriage and the family, we have to at least ask the question, what happened to these institutions that has now left them so vulnerable to this attack?

Western society has allowed its very foundation, the family, to erode because Catholic principles that ought to have governed the family have been rejected. Since the revolt of 1517, western mores hasn’t been able to keep abreast with the indulgences incurred by all the social revolutions that have followed since, and that were indirectly caused by the deficient nature of the revolution of 1517. These revolutions have accelerated a collapse in morality and an escalation in attachment to the transitory things of this world.

As Blasé Pascal would see it, man has exponentially increased his tendency toward distraction. The television, computer and various other distractions have replaced real, interpersonal communication. Careerism has distracted man from familial responsibility. Juvenilism and immaturity, accompanied by their bedfellows—selfishness, lack of commitment and materialism—has broken families apart with the hammers of divorce and multiple re-marriages. The LGBT agenda would pose no substantial threat to the family if the family in our society was not already so distracted and off course.

If Catholic parents were to step up to the plate and actually live what the Church has always taught, they would become an influence that might retard the spiral of degeneracy in our western society. It is unlikely, though, that mainstream Catholics can step up to the plate, even if they wanted. The changes in the Church in the twentieth century, and especially after the Second Vatican Council, were catastrophic.

As the modern secular world exponentially increased man’s tendency toward distraction, the Second Vatican Council disastrously invited Catholics to “dialogue” with this world, as though this world had something to offer the perfect society. Modern mainstream Catholics have been sold a lie that they could be part of the world and still be authentically Catholic. They were told to look for truth outside of a perspective shaped by Catholicism (the Catholic identity). As a result the Catholic family is often indistinguishable from the rest, with Catholics living similar lifestyles, and with comparable numbers of divorce, infidelity, use of contraception, etc.

The truth about homosexuality is muted. Parents are rendered incapable of being the leaven needed to build up the family. All the blame could be laid at the feet of liberal politicians, lobbyists, and bureaucrats, but that would be only half the story. The other half of the story is that Catholics during and after Vatican II forgot these words:

I pray not that thou shouldst take them out of the world, but that thou shouldst keep them from evil. They are not of the world, as I also am not of the world. Sanctify them in truth. Thy word is truth. (Jn. 17. 15-17.)

We ought not to be of the world. We ought to be of the truth. How, though, can we be kept from evil if we insist on “dialoguing” with it? There can be no dialogue with a world steeped in perdition. The only way forward in the wake of the California LGBT law is to end this disastrously stupid dialogue, and start proclaiming the truth of our Catholic religion, and living it faithfully and joyfully.