A circunferência rectangular - por Nuno Serras Pereira

20. 01. 2014

Eu sei que parece incrível mas confesso que sempre pensei que a função ou melhor a missão de um órgão de informação católico fosse a de informar e a de formar. Porém, tenho verificado que é exactamente o contrário. A extraordinária emissora católica (?) do episcopado português tem, mais uma vez, vindo a demonstrar exactamente o contrário – embora depois dê aparências de emendar a mão com uma Nota que não passa de uma minúscula ilha no vasto oceano dos serviços noticiosos.

Não obstante, os leitores dos garatujos que vou esboçando estejam habituados a ler, sempre com crescente espanto, as minhas estravagâncias inconcebíveis, estou em que se desatasse a redigir artigos sobre os quadrados triangulares ou sobre as circunferências rectangulares não duvidariam que tinha ultrapassado infinitamente todos os limites do razoável. Pois… Mas ninguém se assombra com as repetições ao longo do dia, todos os dias, na “informação” da rr da expressão “casais homossexuais” (sic = assim mesmo). Se isto não é desinformação nem deformação então não existe diferença alguma entre a verdade e a mentira, o certo e o errado, a realidade e a alucinação delirante.

E, no entanto, seria tão fácil dizer: os pseudocasais homossexuais; ou os impropriamente (falsamente) chamados casais homossexuais; ou entre pessoas do mesmo sexo a que uma lei injusta e, portanto, carecida de qualquer autoridade ou valor denomina de casais homossexuais, etc. Claro que poderá sempre argumentar-se que não é prático, que são frases extensas…

Mas entre ter que dizer mais algumas palavras e não ser objectivamente cúmplice da propaganda da ideologia do género a escolha parece-me clara. Além de que não só se deixa de incutir nas mentalidades dos ouvintes essa venenosa e perversa ideologia como, pelo contrário, se infunde a verdade nas consciências dos mesmos.

À Honra e Glória de Cristo, Caminho, VERDADE, e Vida. Ámen.

The New Homophiles and Their Critics - by Austin Ruse

In Crisis

This new school of writers and thinkers that I have called the New Homophiles are not without their critics. How could they not be? After all, while they want a warmer embrace from the Church, they want more than that and some of it seems at variance with the wishes and perhaps even the teachings of the Church.

Some of their critics come from their own ranks, those with chaste same-sex attraction but who also believe the New Homophiles have gone too far.

Terry Nelson runs a blog called “Abbey Roads in Ordinary Time” where he regularly takes after New Homophile propositions. In an October 2010 post he wrote about the idea that St. Aelred was gay or at least same-sex attracted. This is a major point among the New Homophiles who believe Aelred’s book “Spiritual Friendship” offers a treatise for how to be gay and chaste and still experience intensely loving relationships with another man.

Aelred wrote, “It is no small consolation in this life to have someone you can unite with in an intimate affection and the embrace of holy love, someone in whom your spirit can rest, to whom you can pour out your soul, to whom pleasant exchanges, as to soothing songs, you can fly in sorrow … with whom spiritual kisses, as with remedial salves, you may draw out all the weariness of your restless anxieties.”

Sounds pretty gay to my modern ears, and to the New Homophiles, too.

Terry Nelson begs to differ, as do Aelred scholars. He says the Aelred-as-gay meme is of recent vintage, “…a novel theory postulated in the mid-twentieth century … those who make this claim are looking at this from our nineteenth–twenty-first century perspective and contemporary understanding of same-sex relations as posited by gay culture today.”

He accuses the New Homophiles of playing something of a “doctrinal shell game” where “just about every time a couple of them write anything ‘ground-breaking’ they seem to be challenged by readers as to their orthodoxy. Subsequently they appear to backtrack and present voluminous explanations of what they really meant to say … it seems to me the underlying intention is to normalize homosexuality and to declare gay is good.”

This gets to the most serious problem with the New Homophile proposition, their insistence on maintaining their gay identity. Melinda Selmys, a formerly active Lesbian who publishes books at Our Sunday Visitor, now married with six children, actually calls herself “queer.” She and her friends want to be known as gay and they want the Church not just to welcome but to celebrate their gayness.

Not a homosexual himself, Michael W. Hannon comes to the debate from a more academically rigorous point of view than Terry Nelson but he, too, takes issue with this main proposition of Ron Belgau, Chris Damian and the rest, that it is perfectly fine to maintain a gay sexual-identity.

In a First Things essay last fall, Hannon criticized Pope Francis for his casual use of the term “gay people.” He calls the concept of homosexuality “unmerited by its pedigree” because it was constructed in the nineteenth century when the classical notion of the sodomite “was set up as the bearer of a distinct and pervasive psychological persuasion.”

Hannon believes the heterosexual-homosexual construct is “masquerading … as a natural categorization, applicable to all people in all times and places according to the typical objects of their sexual desires.”

He says, “…this framework puts on airs, deceiving those who adopt its distinctions into believing that they are worth far more than they really are.”

Hannon warns, “Our young people … now regularly find themselves agonizing over their sexual identity, navel-gazing in an attempt to discern their place in this allegedly natural framework of orientations.”

Paul Scalia wrote a widely read essay in First Things nine years ago called “A Label that Sticks.” A well-regarded priest in the Diocese of Arlington, Virginia and at the time chaplain to the Courage chapter in Arlington, Scalia offered a warning about the dangers of young people identifying themselves as gay.

He said educators uniformly try to keep kids from labeling themselves and others as such things can “reinforce prejudices.” The exception, however, is for those who experience same-sex attraction. For them there is a whole educational apparatus waiting to identify, encourage, label and then lock them under gay amber for all time.

Scalia says at a time of general adolescent confusion about almost everything, such labels are tempting to the child because he wants to belong somewhere and to others “because of their convenience and efficiency. They are common, close at hand, and make quick work of a difficult issue. But they also identify a person with his homosexual inclinations. They presume that a person is his inclinations or attractions; he is ‘gay’ or ‘homosexual’.” He insists—in keeping with the Church—“People’s sexual inclinations do not determine their identity.”

The most prolific of the New Homophile critics is Daniel Mattson, a working musician and himself same-sex attracted, also living chaste, but insisting he is not “gay” but rather simply a man and a child of God. He says the word “gay” does not accurately describe who or what he is. Those who use it, like the New Homophiles, are not faithful to the theological anthropology of the Church.

Mattson sees the New Homophile embrace of the gay identity as “counter to the truth of man and therefore an obstacle to authentic self-knowledge.” He says “Though people may describe themselves by using terms like ‘gay’ or ‘queer’ which are commonly used in today’s culture, as Christians who believe in man created in the image of God, we should ask if these cultural terms are, in fact, true ontological categories of the human person, in accord with the blue print of human existence.” Mattson insists the “clear definition of our sexual identity [is] revealed to us by Scripture and the Church.”

Mattson says “Since I am Catholic, the sexual identity I am called to embrace is my maleness; my true sexual orientation is towards women, my true sexual complement.” He says his attraction to men is not a new essential orientation but a “disorientation” that “does not exist within God’s blue print for humanity.”

In 1986, then head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger issued the “Pastoral Letter on the Care of the Homosexual Person” where he wrote, “Today the Church provides a badly needed context for the care of the human person when she refuses to consider the person as a ‘heterosexual’ or a ‘homosexual’ and insists that every person has a fundamental right Identity: the creature of God, and by grace, his child and heir to eternal life.”

Mattson says he takes no umbrage at the phrase objectively disordered, something the New Homophiles bristle at, and that he views his same-sex attraction as a disability “in some ways similar to blindness or deafness.”

Against the New Homophiles he does not see same-sex attraction as a gift “in and of itself.” He insists that any goods “supposedly unique to homosexuality are common to man, and all that is good in man is the result of being made in the image and likeness of God.”

He opposes the New Homophile notion of “gay exceptionalism” flowing from the supposed good of homosexuality. “No,” he says, “the good is the redemptive healing work of God that begins when we honestly acknowledge that homosexuality is a wound” and he says that if same-sex attracted persons take this view they can become “wounded healers.”

Most people were not even aware the New Homophiles were even out there. Most of us discovered it when they were given a regular home at First Things last year, something that has concerned any number of faithful Catholics. Mattson was given a few chances to engage their ideas there but then he was mysteriously dropped without a word last summer.

What is needed now is for serious Catholic theologians to engage the New Homophile proposition. These folks are not going away, and neither should they. But should their ideas be bandied about without real heavyweight consideration? Most of them are only recently decanted PhDs, not that there is anything wrong with that, but they are proposing things that are new and even esoteric and are going largely unchallenged.

And even if they cannot convince the Church to develop or change the teaching on homosexuality, and they probably can’t, the real problem is their ideas are circulating and, according to one priest who deals with these issues, undermining the pastoral work of the Church. This priest bluntly told me, “They are in their ivory towers, they are not pastors and they are not only undermining our work but they are undermining the wishes of Catholic families.”

Think of it this way. Your 14-year-old son feels different from the other guys at school. For whatever reason, he always has. He confides this to a counselor who asks him about his sexual orientation. Your son says that maybe the difference he feels is that he is gay. The apparatus kicks in to place him under the gay amber for life.

Now, do you want your son to talk to Chris Damian, one of the New Homophiles who has said he would tell that young man to “Seek to draw yourself more fully into the Church and to discern how this might be a gift in your life and in others’ lives.”

Or do you want him to meet Daniel Mattson and Father Paul Scalia who would tell the boy, “You are not your sexual inclinations. You are not ‘gay.’ What you are is a man and a Son of God.”

At first blush there seems to be very little difference between the two, but as you gaze more closely at all that is packed into the New Homophile Proposition, you realize the difference is immense and may be profoundly harmful.

Cuomo to Catholics: You’re Not Welcome in NY - by George J. Marlin

In TCT

I was born in New York State and have lived here for more than 61 years. During that time I have paid plenty in state and local taxes and have served the public in a number of capacities including two terms as Executive Director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

I am also a Catholic and a member of New York’s Conservative Party, have served on the transition teams of governors-elect George Pataki (R) and Andrew Cuomo (D), and have been a member of Cuomo’s Council of Economic and Fiscal Advisors.

Yet despite my public service and the large chunk of my earnings that have gone to support New York’s governmental maze, according to Governor Cuomo, I should move out of the Empire State.

Why?  Because I am pro-life, oppose same-sex marriage, and have doubts about Cuomo’s 2013 hastily prepared gun legislation (the SAFE Act) that permits you to buy a gun with a 10-round magazine, but bans using more than seven shots if you need to defend yourself.      

Here’s what Cuomo said this past Friday on “The Capital Pressroom,” an Albany radio talk show, about a large segment of NY voters:

Who are they? Are they these extreme conservatives who are right to life, pro-assault weapons, anti-gay? Is that who they are?  Because if that’s who they are and they’re the extreme conservatives, they have no place in the state of New York because that’s not who New Yorkers are.

In an unguarded moment, Governor Cuomo stated publicly what many on the Left have been privately thinking for years: that pro-life and pro-traditional marriage supporters are Ku Klux Klan-like bigots who should either shut up or get out.

Cuomo has not only written off millions of New York Christians and Jews (among others) as unfit citizens, he has yanked the welcome mat from under half the nation’s population, who, public opinion polls indicate, oppose abortion and same-sex marriage.

As for those who “have no place in the state of New York,” the person at the top of that list must be the Archbishop of New York, Cardinal Timothy Dolan. That’s because Dolan has proudly followed in the footsteps of his predecessors who were unabashed defenders of Church teachings in the public square.

For instance, Cardinal Terence Cooke, NYC’s seventh archbishop (1968-1983), whose cause is being promoted for sainthood, publicly fought the passage of the state’s 1970 liberal abortion bill. And the week Roe v. Wade was handed down by the Supreme Court, he issued a pastoral letter that was read in every parish condemning abortion as a “fundamental moral evil.”  Cooke inaugurated the annual Respect Life week and established “Birth Right,” a service to help pregnant women who choose not to abort their babies.

As for “gay rights,” every year Cooke opposed proposed legislation in New York’s City Council that would have amended the administrative code to outlaw discrimination due to “sexual orientation or affectional preference.” You read that right.

A typical statement expressing the Church’s position, released by Cardinal Cooke in April 1978, reads:

If the bill has an underlying purpose, to advocate and gain approval of homosexual behavior and lifestyle, then there is no way in which the Catholic Church in the City of New York may find it acceptable. And there is no way in which we can remain silent on the issue.

The Catholic Church’s moral teaching differentiates between “orientation” and “behavior” for both homosexuals and heterosexuals. While a person’s orientation is not subject to moral evaluation, there is no doubt that a person’s behavior is subject to evaluation. Homosexual behavior and an attendant homosexual life style is not in accord with Catholic moral teaching and is, in fact, harmful to all persons who become involved; heterosexuality is the norm for human behavior.

And lest we forget, in the mid-1970s Cooke had an ally in his fight against abortion and gay rights: Mario Cuomo, father of the current governor.

The New York Times reported during Cuomo the Elder’s unsuccessful 1974 primary run for lieutenant governor that he said in a televised debate that “he would have voted against the 1970 law that relaxed abortion curbs in the state.”  The New York Daily News and the Post also reported that, in his unsuccessful 1977 run for mayor, Mario said he would veto a gay rights bill “that would give homosexual teachers the right to proselytize or advocate their lifestyle.”

I wonder if Governor Andrew Cuomo, a baptized Catholic and a graduate of Archbishop Molloy High School and Fordham University, will demand that Cooke’s cause for canonization be, well, aborted because the cardinal was an “extremist” for defending the teachings of his Church. Will ask his father, himself a former governor, to leave the state for having politically incorrect thoughts forty years ago?

By claiming that people who disagree with his cultural views “have no place in the state of New York,” Cuomo has joined those whom historian Richard Hofstadter described as “totalitarian liberals,” people who employ illiberal means to achieve so-called liberal reforms.

Cardinal Dolan and the bishops of New York’s other eight dioceses have an obligation to respond and to condemn anyone – especially any Catholic public figure – who threatens those who adhere to Church doctrine.

Chicago’s Cardinal Francis George has predicted that he will die in his bed, his successor will die in prison, and his successor will die a martyr. We may not be quite there yet. But unless Church leaders and others act quickly and forcefully, Catholics and others of traditional moral views may find themselves not simply marginalized, but – if some politicians have their way – facing something very like exile in their own nation.

«La Chiesa é l' ostacolo da abbattere» - di Massimo Introvigne

In NBQ

Il 16 gennaio 2014 la Pontificia Commissione Teologica Internazionale ha pubblicato un corposo documento «Dio Trinità, unità fra gli uomini. Il monoteismo cristiano contro la violenza» (aqui em HTML; aqui em PDF), presentato come frutto di cinque anni di lavoro e come testo specificamente approvato e rivisto dal Prefetto della Congregazione per la Dottrina della Fede, il prossimo cardinale Gerhard Müller. Temo di essere facile profeta se prevedo che questo documento, lungo e complesso, sarà letto da pochi, avrà scarsa eco sui media e finirà rapidamente nel dimenticatoio. Male: perché questo grande lavoro, voluto e richiesto da Benedetto XVI e ora completato sotto Papa Francesco, è di qualità veramente notevole e denuncia un'aggressione senza precedenti alla Chiesa che è in atto da parte della cultura laicista dominante, rispondendo colpo su colpo.

«La Chiesa è l'ostacolo da abbattere». Così il documento descrive l'attuale temperie culturale, dove agguerriti poteri forti danno il tono non solo alla cultura dominante nelle università, ma anche alla maggior parte dei media. Come si cerca di abbattere la Chiesa? Ascrivendole la responsabilità di tutte le violenze più gravi della storia. Queste, si afferma, derivano dalla fede nell'esistenza di verità assolute garantite da Dio creatore di una natura che la ragione può conoscere e decifrare come verità. Derivano, cioè, dal rifiuto cattolico del relativismo: e dal monoteismo, che rende fanatici e intolleranti.

C'è, anzitutto, un «disegno totalitario del pensiero unico», fondato su un «sentire relativistico totale»: è la dittatura del relativismo, che aggredisce chiunque pensi che esista la verità. Anzi, la verità «viene esplicitamente indicata come una minaccia radicale per l’autonomia del soggetto e per l’apertura della libertà. Soprattutto perché la pretesa di una verità obiettiva e universale, di riferimento per tutti, supposto che sia accessibile allo spirito umano, viene immediatamente associata ad una pretesa di possesso esclusivo da parte di un soggetto o gruppo umano. Essa porterebbe così alla giustificazione del dominio dell’uomo che ne rivendica il possesso sull’uomo che, secondo questa pretesa, ne è privo. In conseguenza di questa rappresentazione della verità, che la ritiene inseparabile dalla volontà di potenza, anche l’impegno per la sua ricerca, e la passione della sua testimonianza, sono viste a priori come matrici di conflitto e di violenza fra gli uomini».

Per la dittatura del relativismo, di questa violenza sarebbe responsabile la Chiesa perché insegna il monoteismo. Se c'è un solo Dio c'è anche una sola verità. Se invece ci sono più dei, allora sono possibili più verità. Solo il politeismo garantisce il relativismo. C'è una vera inversione rispetto alla tradizionale storia delle religioni, anche laica, che considerava il monoteismo un progresso rispetto al politeismo. Questo «rovesciamento del quadro moderno è inaspettato: ora il monoteismo è arcaico e dispotico, il politeismo è creativo e tollerante».

Per mettere in conto ai cristiani - che certo talora nella storia hanno ceduto alla tentazione della violenza, ma assai meno di altri, e certo meno delle ideologie anticristiane - anche massacri commessi da altre religioni, continua il documento, si ricorre a una categoria che la storia delle religioni ha invece da tempo messa in discussione, quella delle «tre grandi religioni monoteistiche», che esprime certo qualcosa di vero ma tratta l'ebraismo, l'islam e il cristianesimo. - che sono invece molto diversi fra loro - come se il loro «monoteismo» fosse identico. È un notevole merito del documento denunciare «la sommaria classificazione dell’ebraismo, del cristianesimo e dell’islam, come le tre grandi “religioni monoteistiche”», perché si tratta di tesi diffuse anche nel mondo cattolico. Lo scopo per cui il moderno laicismo ripropone queste vecchie teorie non è il dialogo interreligioso ma l'attacco alla religione, il cui scopo principale è attaccare il cristianesimo, anzi attaccare in particolare la Chiesa Cattolica. «Non possiamo passare sotto silenzio il fatto che, in qualche parte intellettualmente rilevante della nostra cultura occidentale, l’aggressività con la quale viene riproposto questo “teorema”, si concentra essenzialmente nella denuncia radicale del cristianesimo». «La puntigliosa identificazione del cristianesimo cattolico come l’ostacolo da abbattere, nella lotta contro il monoteismo che diffonde la violenza religiosa nel mondo, nonostante tutto, non cessa di stupire».

Il documento ribatte colpo su colpo a queste accuse. Interpreta alcune affermazioni bellicose dell'Antico Testamento, mostrando che s'inquadrano in uno specifico contesto storico, vanno lette anche come metafore della lotta contro il Diavolo e il male morale, e soprattutto sono state superate dal messaggio del Vangelo. In una parte di non agevole lettura del documento, ispirata al Magistero di Benedetto XVI, si fa anche notare che il cristianesimo ha permesso per la prima volta nella storia la distinzione - non la separazione - fra religione e politica, e ha fondato l’autonomia della politica, superando ogni tentazione teocratica.

Non è vero, si aggiunge, che il politeismo è tollerante: nel clima culturale creato dalle religioni politeistiche si sono consumate autentiche stragi contro i seguaci di religioni diverse. Associare politeismo e tolleranza appare persino «stravagante». La stessa «religione politeistica dell’impero romano, a sua volta, con tutta la straordinaria modernità del suo concetto di cittadinanza, e della sua struttura multi-etnica e multi-religiosa, perseguitò con specifico accanimento il cristianesimo, colpevole di rifiutare l’incensazione dell’imperatore come figura divina. La risposta si espresse nella testimonianza non violenta e nell’accettazione del martirio cristiano». Non parliamo, poi, delle ideologie moderne, portatrici di «un crescente e sconcertante dispiegamento di stili di vita e di comportamento ispirati alla violenza: spontanea, immediata, distruttiva. Sempre più inconsapevole di se stessa, e persino eticamente giustificata», o consacrata dalle leggi. Le ideologie, specie quelle distruttive del XX secolo, sono in realtà i nuovi politeismi, dove «l’uomo ostile al Dio buono e creatore, nell’ossessione di “diventare come Lui”, diventa un “Dio perverso” e prevaricatore nei confronti dei suoi simili. Dal politeismo di queste controfigure narcisistiche del “Dio perverso”, che viene dal peccato fin dall’origine, non può venire nulla di buono per la pacifica convivenza fra gli uomini».

Oggi l'aggressione contro la Chiesa Cattolica e i cristiani continua, fondata sul
«pregiudizio – tipico del modello razionalistico – secondo il quale, anche sul piano esistenziale e sociale, c’è un solo modo per affermare la verità: negare la libertà o eliminare l’antagonista». L'orizzonte è quello dell'eliminazione di Dio e dell'imposizione - ora suadente, ora violenta - dell’ateismo, con la conseguente negazione della libertà. «L’eliminazione di Dio, stabilita sulla base di una ragione "naturalistica", si associa oggi frequentemente alla risoluzione "biologica" della libertà umana. In questa prospettiva il nostro cervello si è costruito il pensiero di Dio per ragioni legate ad un determinato stadio evolutivo: in funzione del governo della complessità, per compensare l’inevitabilità della frustrazione, come dispositivo di neutralizzazione della morte».

La religione è dunque una patologia, che va eliminata. Il futuro che le ideologie preparano all'umanità è però un futuro di violenza e di morte. Già oggi viviamo - conclude il documento - nel «tempo della persecuzione», che «deve essere sostenuto, nell’attesa della conversione sperata per tutti. Di questa pazienza, di questa sopportazione, di questa tenacia dei “santi” nel portare la tribolazione dell’attesa, noi siamo in debito di riconoscenza verso molti fratelli e sorelle perseguitati per la loro appartenenza cristiana. Noi onoriamo la loro testimonianza come la risposta decisiva alla domanda sul senso della missione cristiana in favore di tutti. L’epoca di una nuova evidenza a riguardo del rapporto fra religione e violenza fra gli uomini è aperta dal loro coraggio. Dovremo sapercelo meritare. Dell’avvento di questa nuova epoca, e dei frutti dello Spirito che ne devono seguire, la Madre del Signore deve essere considerata l’insostituibile custode. La coscienza e l’invocazione della sua speciale intercessione, dovrà essere un tema speciale della nostra conversione e della nostra preghiera».

Homossexuais contra co-adopção: «Soy homosexual, no gay»: testimonio de Jean-Pier en la manifestación pro-familia de Roma

In ReL

El sábado 11 de enero en Roma tuvo lugar una manifestación en defensa de la familia, la primera organizada por La Manif Pour Tous Italia (www.lamanifpourtous.it) en la que participaron más de 4.000 personas.

Publicamos a continuación de forma íntegra el discurso de Jean-Pier Delaume-Myard, francés, un hombre con sentimientos homosexuales y que se define como homosexual, pero que está en contra de redefinir el matrimonio y de que se entreguen niños a parejas del mismo sexo, privándoles de la posibilidad de crecer con un padre y una madre.

Discurso de Jean-Pier Delaume-Myard,
Roma, 11 de enero de 2014

Queridos amigos, ¡buenas tardes a todos! Desgraciadamente no tengo la suerte de hablar vuestro bello idioma, por lo que os ruego que me permitáis hablar en francés. Soy muy feliz y es para mí un honor estar aquí en Italia, junto a vosotros, con La Manif pour Tous Italia.

Lo que nos reúne hoy aquí es el valor fundamental de la familia. Nosotros mismos formamos una bonita y gran familia que va más allá de las fronteras nacionales, porque la familia es una y universal.

Que se hable de esto aquí, en vuestro país Italia, como en el nuestro Francia, o en otros países europeos o en todo el mundo, no importa. De hecho, me gustaría recordar a mi amigo Bobby que lucha como nosotros en los Estados Unidos contra los lobbies gais porque no queremos que la mujer sea considerada una mercancía, no queremos que los niños sean privados voluntariamente de un padre o de una madre, o de ambos.

Conozco un poco Italia. He tenido ocasión de venir varias veces, en circunstancias distintas. La primera vez fue en 1981, después de una grave enfermedad que me había trastornado durante mi adolescencia. Para dar gracias al Señor por haberla superado fui a San Damiano, dónde aún vivía Mama Rosa que había visto a la Virgen María. Después tuve la suerte de venir a Roma para participar en una audiencia privada con el Papa Juan Pablo II. Pero he venido también en otras ocasiones. El vínculo que me une a Italia es también de tipo afectivo; de hecho, viví 8 años con un amigo italiano.

En el mes de noviembre de 2012, en Francia los medios de comunicación anunciaron que todas las personas homosexuales estaban a favor del matrimonio entre personas del mismo sexo y que todos los homosexuales querían hijos.

En realidad me estaban robando mi voz, estaban robando nuestra voz, de nosotros homosexuales que no habíamos pedido nada de todo esto.

Por este motivo decidí coger papel y bolígrafo como un simple ciudadano y escribir en el sitio web de una conocida publicación semanal francesa: Le Nouvel Observateur.

Ese artículo, titulado “Soy homosexual, no gay: ¡detened esta confusión!” dio la vuelta rápidamente en la red con más de 110.000 visitas.

En el artículo escribo, entre otras cosas, que “no estoy orgulloso de mi orientación sexual, no más de lo que un hetero lo esté de la suya».

Quiero recordar claramente que “los gais hacen referencia a una cultura, a un estilo de vida. Necesitan que su carnicero, su panadero, su kiosquero sean gais. Quieren vivir con otros gais… Yo, como homosexual y como individuo de una nación, he elegido siempre habitar y actuar sin preocuparme de la orientación sexual de mis vecinos o de mis compañeros de trabajo”.

En el artículo planteo también una pregunta importante: “¿Por qué quieren una ley en favor del matrimonio entre personas del mismo sexo? ¿Para las personas homosexuales o para los centenares de “gais” que viven en las zonas chic de París?”.

Después de esto hemos fundado un colectivo llamado HomoVox (www.homovox.com) que reúne a centenares y centenares de homosexuales que se oponen a la ley sobre el matrimonio gay.

He tenido la posibilidad de dar un testimonio en video y la he aceptado de buen grado. Después de tantos artículos y testimonios, el 25 de enero de 2012 me reuní con el Presidente de la República Francesa.

Cuando le dije que la ley sobre los matrimonios gais era en realidad el árbol detrás del cual se escondía el bosque de la maternidad subrogada y de la reproducción medicamente asistida, él me respondió: “No soy para nada favorable a esto y me expresaré en contra”.

En Francia tenemos serias dudas sobre esta cuestión. Sabemos que en ocasión de la presentación de la proxima ley sobre la familia, en marzo, algunos diputados de la actual mayoría depositarán enmiendas en favor de la reproducción medicamente asistida y de la maternidad subrogada.

Como homosexual, desde el principio de mi compromiso, no trabajo en favor de un partido político y menos aún en favor de una comunidad; a mí no me gusta el comunitarismo. Combato en conciencia y con todas mis fuerzas para que cada niño tenga un padre y una madre.

Si yo fuera heterosexual, habría perseguido el mismo fin, es decir, ¡el de la racionalidad!

Mi compromiso no tiene nada que ver con mi orientación sexual.

Me he comprometido porque si uno tiene un mínimo de compasión por los seres humanos, ciertamente no se puede aceptar que un niño se quede sin puntos de referencia sociales.

Me he comprometido porque si dentro de veinte años me encontrase con un chico o una chica, hijo de una pareja del mismo sexo, no quiero que me reproche por haberle privado de la posibilidad de tener un padre o una madre, como cada niño, hijo de una pareja divorciada, de una pareja de hecho o casada. ¡Para todos son necesarios un padre y una madre!

Me he comprometido porque mi deseo de tener hijos no tiene que tener como consecuencia la llegada al mundo de un niño sin el afecto materno.

Me he comprometido porque, como persona responsable, no quiero tener que responder un día a mi hijo, cuando me pregunte quién era su madre, que su identidad no es distinta al número de un cheque.

En Francia, La Manif Pour Tous no sólo es víctima de discriminación, sino que es objeto también de graves violencias por parte de la policía o de duras condenas judiciales. Estoy pensando en Nicolas, un joven de 23 años detenido el 19 de junio de 2013 por llevar puesta una sudadera de La Manif Pour Tous en los Campos Elíseos y condenado a ¡dos meses de cárcel!

Las Autoridades de mi país no han querido oir la voz de una petición que había recogido ¡700.000 firmas!

En Francia la ley que abre al matrimonio de las parejas del mismo sexo ha sido votada deprisa a mano alzada en su segunda lectura ¡con el fin de preservar la paz social!

En Francia las más altas autoridades han declarado que éramos 300.000 personas, cuando en realidad se han manifestado más de ¡un millón de ciudadanos!

Quisiera también aprovechar esta ocasión para dar las gracias de parte de La Manif Pour Tous a uno de vuestros connacionales, Luca Volontè, antes Presidente del PPE en Estrasburgo.

Gracias a uno de vosotros, queridos amigos italianos, el comité de los ministros del Consejo de Europa ha planteado con fecha 23 de abril de 2013 una pregunta al Gobierno francés acerca de la gestión de las manifestaciones en favor de la familia y ha pedido con insistencia al Gobierno que dé explicaciones. Cosa inédita en la patria de los derechos del hombre. Gracias Sr. Luca Volontè.

Si mañana en Francia o en Italia se aprobaran la maternidad subrogada o la reproducción asistida, desgraciadamente no seremos nosotros quienes pagaremos las consecuencias. Las pagarán, ante todo, los mismos niños, privados del derecho legítimo a la filiación directa. Les privaremos del derecho a tener un padre y una madre.

Pagarán las consecuencias los mismos homosexuales, porque son estas mismas leyes las que están creando la homofobia, no los que se manifiestan.

Hoy no tenemos necesidad de llevar puesto una vestido de novia para tener los mismos derechos.

El deseo de tener un hijo es una realidad singular y dolorosa. Yo lo sé. Pero nosotros homosexuales no pedimos a la sociedad un bricolaje legislativo para cambiar la realidad.

La política del gobierno francés no tiene otro objetivo más que el de matar a la Familia. El gobierno “familiafóbico” mata a la familia.

La Manif Pour Tous en Francia sigue pidiendo la abrogación de la ley que autoriza el matrimonio entre personas del mismo sexo.

Además de la necesaria abrogación de dicha ley, proponemos que se reconozca la filiación en el seno de la familia. Un niño no es una mercancía de trueque ni carne de cañón; es un ser humano que tiene el derecho de conocer el origen cultural, geográfico, social y religioso de sus padres.

En lo que respecta las próximas elecciones europeas, recordaremos a los candidatos la importancia de las decisiones que están llamados a tomar. Los candidatos deberían firmar una carta en la que declaran proteger a la familia y respetar a las personas.

Os invitamos a hacer lo mismo en Italia porque estamos convencidos de que la familia es el lugar mejor para crecer y ser educados.

Estamos convencidos de que la familia es la célula base de la sociedad y que la familia asegura el futuro y el progreso del país.

El 21 de octubre pasado publiqué un libro titulado HOMOSEXUAL contra el matrimonio “para todos”. Esta publicación ha sido censurada por los medios de comunicación por la presión ejercida por el lobby LGBT.

Este lobby me acusa de ser un traidor porque no pienso igual que los dos mil gais de París. Es una actitud completamente homofóbica por su parte. Significa que un homosexual no puede ni pensar ni actuar autónomamente.

Más grave es el hecho de que he recibido amenazas de muerte en la web. ¿Quién es homófobo, La Manif Pour Tous o ellos?

Nosotros ciudadanos italianos o franceses, hombres y mujeres razonables, homosexuales o heterosexuales, proseguiremos nuestro camino de hombres responsables que quieren dejar tras de sí un planeta donde los hombres con H mayúscula no sean un bien comercial.

La denominada libertad, querida por algunos, no debe condenar al hombre y su diversidad. El derecho a la diferencia debe seguir siendo la única libertad del ser humano. ¡La naturaleza es la única que puede vigilar!

Por eso, La Manif Pour Tous os da las gracias por haber creado La Manif Pour Tous Italia. Os agradezco de corazón vuestra calorosa acogida. Gracias a todos, nos volveremos a ver pronto, con ocasión de una gran manifestación europea. ¡No renunciaremos nunca!

(Traducción de Helena Faccia Serrano, Alcalá de Henares)   

“Reprotech” Ushers in a New Eugenic Age - by Mark D. Oshinskie

In Crisis

Following the devaluation of babies in the 1970s and 80s in the developed world, babies became scarce and, consequently, desirable once again.  Now, any means used to make babies is seen as good, as long as pregnancy occurs at a convenient time.

Some cannot conceive naturally. The prevailing view is that those who cannot do so should have free access to such reproductive technologies as in vitro fertilization (IVF) or the purchase of gametes, i.e., sperm and eggs. Yet, many do not know what occurs in IVF labs and others do not care, as long as offspring result. The zeitgeist favoring “reprotech” obscures the serious social problems that reproductive technologies both reflects and facilitates.

For example, the growing demand for IVF is, in large measure, a response to Western cultural changes.  As birth control and abortion became widely available, sex was more reliably separated from procreation and childbearing has been widely postponed. Deferring parenthood into the mid-thirties and beyond worked for some, but has created many fertility clinic users.  Further, aside from delaying child-bearing, contraception enabled serial sexual partners and over ten million new cases of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) each year, which scar reproductive organs and also impair fertility.  IVF is often used to bypass these obstacles.

IVF and the Effectuation of the Brave New World

Such academic commentators as Leon Kass, Francis Fukuyama and Bill McKibben have observed that human genetic engineering, nanotech and robotics will demoralize individuals and damage human community.  They write, for example, of futuristic highly-skilled classical pianists or athletes who know that their parents purchased strong musical or athletic genes for them, and of the existential crises caused regarding the source of,  and credit for, their respective accomplishments.  They observe that democracy will become untenable if some use these technologies to create a master race.  They view these threats to community as prospective, though imminent, as cloning and gene manipulation research continues in earnest.

These warnings are, at once, an exaggeration and an understatement.  They are an exaggeration because, although genomic research has enabled scientists to identify the effects of many DNA sequences, we are still a while (vagueness deliberate) away from having a clearer sense of which genes influence many other traits.  They are also an exaggeration because many have observed that, to date, gene manipulation efforts reveal that genes cannot often be simply cut and pasted, one for another, especially without causing serious unanticipated effects.

The authors understate the dangers posed by IVF because, in the interim at least, this reprotech enables efforts to clear these technological hurdles.  It uses the same lab equipment and provides cumulating knowledge, techniques and an oversupply of embryos needed to advance genetic engineering and cloning.  IVF is to genetic engineering and cloning what nuclear power plants are to nuclear weapons proliferation.

Reprotech’s effects on the aforementioned commentators’ concerns are understated in another, more important way.  The same ethic of reproductive control that animates IVF also allows egg and sperm shopping, genetic screening and embryo selection—or its companions, sex-selection or eugenic abortion.  One may maintain that the embryo is not a person but one cannot dispute that the embryo at seven days tells us much about the person at 27 years. With its multi-embryo production, IVF already enables parents to select between embryos for numerous lifelong traits, including sex and disability.  Despite their backgrounds, sperm and egg shoppers display distinct preferences for gametes from tall, conventionally attractive gamete sellers with much formal education.   These choices are clearly intended and they are not futuristic practices, which may never become available; they occur every day.

Thus, even if genetic manipulation or cloning never become possible, the eugenic age is already well underway and is accepted by our consumer-sovereign society.  If prospective parents don’t like their unborn’s genes, they can, and often do, end the life.  For example, over 90 percent of fetuses diagnosed with Downs Syndrome are aborted. Not in some futuristic hell, but today, we are ending disability through a medically mediated rendering of Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal,” by purging the disabled.

In a society that increasingly and appropriately declines to execute even serial killers, it seems inconsistent to effectively impose prenatal capital punishment/genocide on the disabled.  Consider further the effects of genetic screening on the self-perception of the able-bodied.  How does it feel to know you were born because you met the standards of your parents and a quality control inspector?  In place of unconditional love, reprotech allows the introduction of discrimination with regard to human dignity based on biological, psychological or educational development, or based on health-related criteria.

Some commentators have suggested that eugenic abortion or embryo selection could be legislatively limited to genes with “life-or-death” diseases. That proposal does not inspire confidence.

First, who can say that a disabled or a relatively brief life—even one with much suffering—is not worth living?  As John Paul II stated in Evangelium Vitae (1995), “The courage and serenity with which so many of our brothers and sisters suffering from serious disabilities lead their lives when they are shown acceptance and love bears eloquent witness to what gives authentic value to life, and makes it, even in difficult conditions, something precious for them and for others.”

Most parents will de-select embryos or abort fetuses whose genes suggest they will someday have MS, ALS, breast cancer or Huntington’s.  These conditions seldom kill, or even afflict, the young.  Besides, as many have observed, the lines between disease and trait or cure and enhancement are quite blurry.  What will be the legislative status of embryos that have genes for schizophrenia?  Deafness?  Depression?  Below average intelligence or height?  Even limiting either genetic manipulation or embryo selection for seemingly esthetic purposes seems impossible, given society’s and the law’s strong support for reproductive choice.  And with reproductive choice as the guiding principle, how will we prohibit parthenogenesis, artificial wombs or chimeras?

The majority of parents allowed to choose between having a fully capable—or perhaps, ultracapable—child, on the one hand, or casting a diffuse vote for an already attenuated democracy on the other, will serve themselves, not the larger group.  As genomic knowledge and embryo selection increase, the pressure to have “perfect” kids will only intensify.  As the number of people with imperfections decreases, society’s acceptance of, and support groups and services for, the imperfect will shrink.  Stanford Law Professor Hank Greely has predicted that, given these competitive pressures, within 50 years, most Americans will be the product of IVF.   While allowing for some incorrect predictions in individual cases, genetic screening will cause the social stratification and personal alienation that the commentators fear, even without the genetic manipulation they foresee.

All we have to do to advance this dystopia is more of what is already done: embrace reprotech, screen gametes/embryos and use/implant those with the traits the parents want.  Even if we could agree on and proscribe what constituted abuses of these practices, regulation of these micro-scale technologies, which involve high stakes to their demanding consumers and the clinics that compete for their business, and which occur behind closed doors in hundreds of office parks, is impracticable.

Distributive Concerns

On a population-wide basis, American medicine is better at generating revenue than it is at advancing health.  Americans spend twice as much per capita on medical care as does any other nation and America ranks twenty seventh in life expectancy, just slightly ahead of Cuba.
 
Medical insurance funds hundreds of billions of medically unnecessary treatments. We routinely test for conditions that are only remotely possible.  One in six adults takes psychoactive drugs, largely because ordinary sadness is now considered a disease.  Sports surgeries are performed to enable 40-somethings to continue to run marathons and ski, instead of taking up walking.

IVF fits squarely within this model of providing elective treatments for the affluent, while the poor do without basic goods and services, and medical care, in the United States and, especially, abroad.  The typical IVF cycle costs $12,000 and multiple cycles are common.  Insurance coverage for IVF is legislatively mandated in 15 of the most populous states.  By itself, IVF adds over 5 percent to medical insurance premiums. The insurance cost of IVF grows sharply when the inflated costs of post-natal care for IVF offspring are considered.  A recent study concluded that twins cost six times ($105,000) and triplets twenty times ($400,000) more than do single babies. Multiple births have increased six-fold because IVF often involves the implantation of multiple embryos.  In a lengthy article in the  New York Times Magazine entitled “The Two Minus One Pregnancy” (2012), we learn that multiples are often reduced in number, in utero, by injections of potassium chloride into the hearts of the “excess,” seemingly weaker, fetuses. While the fertility industry gains an increasing share of insurance dollars, public health/environmental protection measures that would benefit all people are seriously underfunded in relation to the threats presented.

In addition to misallocating resources, IVF facilitates human exploitation.  Like many commercial processes, it allows child-bearing to be outsourced to low income surrogates in the US and abroad.  Instead of mothers producing their own eggs, eggs are harvested from well-pedigreed college students, who risk their health and deplete a significant part of their egg supply, which may endanger their own fertility and accelerate menopause and which enables what the progressive commentator Andrew Kimbrell called “technological adultery.”

Reprotech’s Impact on Self-Perception

Apart from creating a genetically privileged class, reprotech already affects the perception of other beings and basic kinship or solidarity.  Despite vast demographic, ideological and personality differences, until about thirty years ago, humans shared a common, mysterious origin in the union of a woman and a man.  This is no longer universally the case.  In its place, reprotech, immensely profitable in a slow growth economy, applies a corporate model, not only in its technical practices, but in its advertising and competition for market share.

Increasingly, as life is manufactured and sold, it becomes less awesome and more like other possessions.

While reprotech is the ultimate reductionist activity—sperm plus egg plus gestation equals human—it cannot be reduced into its component parts; like all things, we must take its benefit and harm as a unitary whole.  As children have become products of subjective desires and labs, life has been radically altered in ways unreported by the TV news.  

Relativism and utilitarianism have taken firm hold.  God has been removed from most discourse. Churches of all denominations are nearly empty.  Marriage is postponed and eschewed and is increasingly separated from childbearing and raising; more adults live alone and more children live with one parent than ever.  A hook-up culture has supplanted the mutual affection and acceptance of courtship.

The perception and treatment of children have also changed: instead of being born in the fullness of time, many are prenatally frozen or their births are scheduled, they are formula-fed, placed in day care, over-managed and overscheduled.  Social scientists report numerous indicia of sharply diminishing social cohesion since the 1970s.  Have contraception, abortion and reprotech singlehandedly caused each of these changes?  No, but they fit squarely within a cultural context that makes everything, even human life, bend to individual sovereignty, engineering principles and ultimately, commerce.  As Waclav Havel wrote, “The tragedy of modern man is not that he knows less and less about the meaning of his life but that it bothers him less and less.”

Fundamentally, reprotech places the interests of the individual above those of the community.  Using it is like building one’s home on the beach at Normandy or in Yosemite Valley. It pleases the consumer and their family and friends.  But it costs the culture something more precious and universal, namely the notion of the sacred and the continuation of a society where genetic advantage cannot be purchased.  Reprotech has generated many offspring. But with its effects on human perception and community, reprotech users should not expect the emerging world to resemble the one their parents grew up in, or be much of a place to raise children.