Posted on 05/12/2025 8:29:16 PM PDT by ebb tide
While there are only a few recorded examples of Pope Leo XIV’s history with LGBTQ issues, his statements stand in stark contrast with those of his predecessor, Pope Francis, who early in his pontificate wondered aloud, “If a person is gay … who am I to judge?” He later allegedly told a young man, “God made you gay.”
At best, Francis engendered ambiguity on LGBT issues within the Church. At worst, he introduced diabolical lies and permitted them to flourish, countering both Gospel truth and sage, best practices for pastoring the same-sex attracted and gender confused.
If past is prologue, then Pope Leo XIV may well usher in a period of restored orthodox teaching that can serve as a beacon of light to homosexuals and the gender dysphoric.
Before rising to the Chair of Saint Peter, Father Robert Prevost categorically condemned the “homosexual lifestyle” and the “redefinition of marriage” as being “at odds with the Gospel.”
And while serving in Peru for many years, Prevost reportedly objected to a plan by the government there to teach about gender ideology in schools. “The promotion of gender ideology is confusing, because it seeks to create genders that don’t exist,” he told local news media.
Unlike Pope Francis, Prevost did not seek to appear more compassionate than Jesus, or to casually dismiss the wisdom of the Bible and twenty centuries of Church teaching as culturally conditioned.
FLASHBACK: Pope Leo XIV denounced media ‘sympathy’ for ‘abortion, homosexual lifestyle, euthanasia’
As a priest and pastor, Prevost has understood what Pope Francis did not: it is precisely the hard teachings of the Gospel that draw people — including the same-sex attracted and the gender-confused — to salvation through Jesus Christ.
In 2012, while addressing the world Synod of Bishops on the New Evangelization, then-Fr. Prevost clearly identified the challenge of converting souls and strengthening the faith of Catholics who are overwhelmed by the influence of Western mass media, which fosters “within the general public enormous sympathy for beliefs and practices that are at odds with the Gospel.”
In addition to abortion and euthanasia, he specifically mentioned “the homosexual lifestyle.”
“The sympathy for anti-Christian lifestyle choices that mass media fosters is so brilliantly and artfully ingrained in the viewing public, that when people hear the Christian message it often inevitably seems ideological and emotionally cruel by contrast to the ostensible humaneness of the anti-Christian perspective,” averred Prevost.
“Note for example how alternative families comprised of same-sex partners and their adopted children are so benignly and sympathetically portrayed in television programs and cinema today,” he added.
“If you control the media, you can at least partially control the way people are thinking, because that’s the message that people hear constantly,” said Prevost in a separate interview with Catholic News Service in 2012.
Likely unbeknownst to him in 2012, with just a few words Prevost perfectly described a strategy laid out by gay activists in 1989.
A book titled After the Ball (subtitled “How America Will Conquer Its Fear and Hatred of Gays in the 90’s”) presented a comprehensive plan to establish the normalcy of gays and lesbians and to secure broader acceptance and rights. It turned out to be a disciplined, wildly successful decades-long marketing campaign.
Here are a few key excerpts from the manifesto which show then-Father Prevost’s declaration to be a bullseye:
We have in mind a strategy … calculated and powerful … manipulative … It’s time to learn from Madison Avenue, to roll out the big guns. Gays must launch a large-scale campaign—we’ve called it the waging peace campaign—to reach straights through the mainstream media. We’re talking about propaganda …
You can forget about trying right up front to persuade folks that homosexuality is a good thing. But if you can get them to think it is just another thing—meriting no more than a shrug of the shoulders—then your battle for legal and social rights is virtually won.
Application of the keep-talking principle can get people to the shoulder-shrug stage. The free and frequent discussion of gay rights by a variety of persons in a variety of places gives the impression that homosexuality is commonplace.
Constant talk builds the impression that public opinion is at least divided on the subject and that a sizable bloc—the most modern up-to-date citizens—accept or even practice homosexuality … The main thing is to talk about gayness until the issue becomes thoroughly tiresome…
[G]ays can undermine the moral authority of … churches over less fervent adherents by portraying such institutions as antiquated backwaters badly out of step with the times and with the latest findings of psychology. [This] has already worked well in America against churches on such topics as divorce and abortion. With enough open talk about the prevalence and acceptability of homosexuality, that alliance can work for gays…
Two different messages about the gay victim are worth communicating. First the public should be persuaded the gays are victims of circumstance, that they no more chose their sexual orientation than they did say their height, skin color, talents or limitations. (We argue that, for all practical purposes, gays should be considered to have been born gay—even though sexual orientation, for most humans, seems to be the product of a complex interaction between innate predispositions and environmental factors during childhood and early adolescence.)…
And since no choice is involved, gayness can be no more blameworthy than straightness. Second, they should be portrayed as victims of prejudice. Straights don’t fully realize the suffering they bring upon gays…
In all candor, we’re convinced that the whole of our scheme will work as intended.
READ: Pope Leo XIV urges journalists to build ‘peace,’ ‘search for truth’ in first audience
Sadly, working with woke leftist forces in the media, academia, and government, the bewitching scheme as laid out by gay activists nearly four decades ago has worked brilliantly. And during his pontificate, Pope Francis did nothing to impede their quest.
“Pope Francis did more for LGBTQ people than all his predecessors combined,” suggested Fr. James Martin, S.J. after Francis’ death.
But that amounts to an untruth. Francis likely did more to harm LGBTQ people — especially Catholics — than any pope in history. He joined himself with the zeitgeist, with the spirit of the world as presented by gay activists.
As a same-sex attracted Catholic who was brought back to the Church by the bright light of the Gospel, it seemed to me throughout Francis’ pontificate that he had abandoned the pastoring of the same-sex attracted and the gender dysphoric, as if the Gospel offered no power to change or resist.
I viewed his pastoral approach to be an offense against the Holy Spirit.
I am hopeful that we will no longer witness confusing statements in conformity with Western media and “at odds with the Gospel” emanating from the Vatican, and that Pope Leo XIV will, like Cardinal Robert Sarah, prove to be a true pastor to those who currently identify as LGBTQ.
In direct contradiction to the authors of After the Ball: In all candor, I’m convinced that the Gospel will work as exactly as intended.
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I am very happy with Pope Leo.
And Pope Leo did not follow Francis’ lead by choosing not to live in the “humble home” that Frank chose.
I really like him so far.
One good thing.
But he’s pro-immigration, especially from horrible, dangerous America-hating countries. Not OK with me. We’ll see how this works out.
But has he evolved?
Basing rights on deviant sexual practices creates people in law that don’t exist.
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