[NYer]

If they are unhappy, they can attend a public school ... bonus: it's free.

Ping!

[nickcarraway]

Great author.

[YHAOS]

Accepting the “burden” ~ or shirking the “burden” . . . what to do?
BEEP!

[Chainmail]

Figures. We get a Church leader that speaks the truth and the deviants (and Pelosi the “Catholic”) go after him. If we don’t support him, we deserve what we get.

[madprof98]

students and parents told personal stories about their struggles with their sexuality

I am betting that their "sexuality" won the struggle in every single case.

[Bigg Red]

“Everyone is praying that Pope Francis will get rid of Archbishop Cordileone and these priests,”

***
Praying? To whom? Satan?

[Salvation]

Sorry, Sam Singer, you have nothing to say about the Archbishop’s placement in your archdiocese now, nor will that opportunity ever present itself.

Go away.

[betty boop]

“The language is offensive and damaging. As a gay student, I understand the severity of this language….” Had [such] language been present at his school during that time, “It would have been detrimental to my mental health and self-worth.”

Oh, the heart-rending lament of the lost who want to be saved. (From what??? By what???)

The plaint of the above-italics is surprisingly widely shared by the members of the gay community with whom I have been dealing all my life, plus their friends.

What these people all seem to have in common is the demand that they not be “offended” in any way, shape, or form, by anything that makes them feel “uncomfortable.” Any perceived slight to their “self-esteem” evidently causes visceral pain. Therefore, the State (and its minions) must step in to redress and relieve this harm to, this suffering of, their self-esteem, etc.

Whatta buncha wimps!!!

Anyhoot, this very “issue” is very close to me personally right now. My beloved sister is gay. As far as I can recall, we have never broached this subject in our 60 years of sisterly togetherness….

But I managed to grieviously offend her partner of 27 years, “J”, in a phone conversation last Tuesday night. We were having a lovely discussion involving philosophy/theology, when all of the sudden the “gay issue” came up. But not from my side!!!

It was simply that J asked me point-blank what I thought of the issue. I figured the better part of wisdom, given the family connection/context, was to say as little as possible as I could truthfully say.

And so I said: “I have always had the utmost difficulty in understanding how a person could have a mental, psychical self-concept so completely in contradiction of the facts of their own personal biology.”

Note I wasn’t “asserting” a position; I was merely indicating a problem I was experiencing in the analysis of evidence.

Notwithstanding, the conversation terminated at that point.

So I ruminated over these events, and the next day wrote a letter of apology to J. The key concept was that I have always engaged with her as if she were a full-blown, sovereign individual in her own right, and not merely as “a member of some class, or group.” And that’s the truth of it. Also I reaffirmed the family connections….

I got a letter back today, thanking me for my apology, but somehow I did not get the sense that J has yet accepted it. She indicated she was still suffering, still speechless, owing to the injuries that I had imposed on her in my recent hateful speech. Or words to that effect.

Sigh. Life goes on.

Meanwhile I don’t dare write back a word — ‘til J is over her blue funk — assuming she ever gets over it.

Take this sample “family problem” and blow it up to the size of the entire contemporary American culture, and perhaps you can see the types of argument that a sane society has a stake in refuting.

Thank you for the excellent post, NYer!!!