(LifeSiteNews) — Forty-nine years ago this week, having just completed my freshman year in the Architecture Department at Carnegie Mellon University, I went to Confession with our parish priest.
In many ways it had been a great year: I was finally living my dream of becoming an architect, I had earned my private pilot’s license, and I spent many weekends traveling first class to Hawaii, Beverly Hills, and London just to have a quick break from campus life.
But I knew deep down inside that I was leading an escapist’s life, and so when the spring semester ended, I found myself at a critical juncture.
I had experienced same-sex attraction for as long as I could remember – as early as when I was five-years-old – but had never acted on my impulses. My resistance was weakening. I couldn’t keep my secret bottled up much longer.
I unburdened my soul to my parish priest, Fr. Vincent Gatto, on a Monday evening in June 1976, just a couple weeks before the U.S. bicentennial. His words to me are permanently etched in my heart and mind: “This is a cross you will have to bear for the rest of your life.”
I didn’t like hearing that. I didn’t want to see myself as a victim of something I had no control over and that I hadn’t asked for. It seemed unfair.
In speaking truthfully to me, Father Gatto also spoke prophetically, although the meaning of his admonition wouldn’t become clear for another 35 years.
As it turns out, the cross I’ve born has little to do with daily dealing with same-sex attraction for my entire life.
The cross I’ve born is this: Knowing the truth and having to speak out about the normalization of homosexuality and the impossible notion of homosexual “marriage,” no matter the consequences.
I’ve been on the front lines of the marriage battle for over 15 years. I initially entered the fray as a self-identified homosexual man who was unabashedly pro-same-sex “marriage.” In fact, the first opinion piece I ever penned, published by The Washington Post, argued in favor of homosexual “marriage.”
Soon afterward, as I looked more deeply at the issue, something extraordinary happened: I was drawn by undeniable, timeless truths which clearly outweighed my sexual predilections.
I was on the wrong side of history, of science, and of nature.
I realized I had bought into lies aggressively peddled by the world about sexuality and sexual orientation, about what brings happiness and fulfillment, and about the rising importance of personal autonomy and liberty. The lies eventually collapsed under their own weight when, even as a self-identifying homosexual, I concluded that there was no logical or moral basis for supporting the grand pretension of same-sex “marriage.”
I had no choice but to reject what was clearly my false view of reality.
In the end, I realized I had to reform my life. I resolved to restore my marriage to my wife whom I had divorced, to love her unreservedly, and to make our family whole again. Soon after, I was compelled to return to full communion with the Catholic Church.
Along the way, I became a marriage and children’s rights activist, defending the definition of marriage before state legislatures and writing numerous articles on the topic for national newspapers and journals.
I spoke at National Marriage Rallies and symposiums and was even quoted by Rush Limbaugh on his radio show.
I also originated and co-authored two amicus briefs for the United States Supreme Court in defense of marriage. One of those briefs, known as Same-Sex Attracted Men and Their Wives, was submitted in the Obergfell v. Hodges Case in support of allowing states to maintain the definition of marriage as between one man and one woman. It was one of over 60 briefs submitted in defense of marriage, all of which were written by some of the best legal minds in the country working with top marriage, social science, and religious scholars and leaders.
Ultimately, the massive effort was not enough to protect marriage from five men and women robed in black who, in a brazen act of hubris on June 26, 2015, chose to reduce to rubble the immutable definition of marriage as a matter of law.
The justices had been inexplicably wooed by a pop culture bumper sticker meme, “love is love.” They willfully turned a blind eye to timeless truths, ignored the wisdom of every religion and culture known to man, rejected natural law, and decreed that non-conjugal, sterile, non-consummatable relationships would be the law of the land.
Despite the wonderful work done by so many dedicated, often heroic individual activists and organizations working tirelessly for many years, it was not enough.
At that time, I had also recently returned from the November 2014 Humanum Conference at the Vatican, titled The Complementarity of Man and Woman: An International Colloquium, attended by a very impressive array of outstanding leaders and scholars from many of the world’s religious traditions and cultures. Despite the combined riches of wisdom and knowledge displayed there, that too was not enough.
In the 10 years since Obergefell, we have been plunged down a slippery slope into the ghastly world of transgenderism.
Obergefell had opened a door that should never have been opened, releasing the contagion of transgenderism on an unsuspecting, unprepared public and our children have been its most susceptible, tragic victims.
Watching all this up close left me with a question: Why? Why have we lost on every front? Why has easily discernible truth fallen prey to lies? Have we misunderstood the true nature of the battle?
No matter what you’ve read or heard, the heart of this battle was never to be found in our courts, legislatures, the ballot box, or the media. This has not been a tug of war between political parties, between left and right, conservative and liberal. Likewise, this has not even been a battle of “gay versus “straight.” And while focusing on religious liberty has been a necessary pursuit, by itself that too has missed the mark by a wide margin.
We have been treating symptoms, not the cause.
We need to stop shadow boxing, delivering only glancing blows at an adversary we clearly neither perceive nor understand.
Only a vibrant Christian marriage culture can save the US and the west
At its heart, this is a spiritual battle – an ongoing ancient one. Almost no one wants to open their eyes to see this. Most prefer to just shrug their shoulders and accept the current status quo. Many of those who do care prefer to deal with this as a secular issue using secular tools – an approach that has repeatedly proven impotent, doomed to failure.
We have already seen that the Catholic Church hierarchy – popes, cardinals, and bishops – alone cannot win the battle now before us. In all honesty, they appear to lack the will to do so. Nor can leaders of other Christian communities; nor can highly intelligent Christian intellectuals and academics; nor can high-powered Christian attorneys and legal scholars; nor can high-voltage Christian social scientists; nor can powerful Washington politicians, lobbying groups, think tanks or other organizations.
Why? Because this battle hinges on one thing: Creating a vibrant – a truly dominant – marriage culture based on the participation of millions of individuals who value and commit themselves to the supernatural, transcendent spiritual truth about marriage and flat out reject the lies of the world that have crept into our lives and families.
Over the years, many have asked me why would I, someone who suffers same-sex attraction, marry a member of the opposite sex? Weren’t you in denial? Weren’t you being untrue to your “authentic self”? Wasn’t it unfair to your wife?
And as a young man I was obsessed with answering the question, “Was I born gay?” It sure did seem that way!
But all these are the wrong questions.
The right questions are:
- How could I not get married and raise a family? How could anyone not do that?
- How could I close my eyes to the truth and beauty of the complementarity of man and woman? It was displayed in nature all around me.
- Had I – along with millions of others – been imprisoned in a great deception, the grandest pretension of the current age?
- Why would I waste so much time focusing on justifying a trait, wherever it came from, when there is an immensely larger, natural and eternal Truth in which to wondrously participate?
- What’s the big deal about being same-sex attracted?
Note: This article is adapted from an unpublished manuscript: Same-Sex ‘Marriage’ v. The Real Thing
