Making Friends and Influencing People
A journalism student from a local college had set up an appointment to interview me about the debate over gay marriage. About 20 minutes into the interview, she admitted that she had many gay male friends and was for gay marriage. Her assignment was to test her own objectivity by writing a story on someone with whom she strongly disagreed.
We spent three hours together and for me it was like a mini focus group. I presented arguments which I had made in my speeches in Mexico and at a women's conference in Florida. I had seen how they had appealed to my natural constituency, but here I had an opportunity to try them out on someone would had come to me precisely because she saw herself firmly on the other side.
Little by little I saw her defenses crumble. I am not sure the change will be permanent. I know that she is going back into an atmosphere where everything I said will be contradicted, but we parted as friends with a promise to see one another again.
To which ideas did she respond?
They Don’t Care What You Know Until They Know You Care
I presented most of the arguments I had made in my speeches: It's not genetic. It's a preventable and treatable developmental disorder. It's violence against children. But I did so acknowledging the suffering of young men and women who struggle with same-sex attractions which they didn't want and whose origins they don't understand. I kept emphasizing that I cared more about her gay friend than she did because she accepts him as he is — which she tacitly admitted is unhealed — while I want him to be the real man he was meant to be. I want him to be free to really marry and have children.
Second, I took the blame. I am convinced this is crucial. Our side has publicly and privately said things about persons with same-sex attraction which are simply un-Christian and for this we need to demonstrate our real repentance. Sincere repentance is not only necessary if we want to be on God's side in this, it is also essential for us to be credible, because our opposition knows our sins in the matter and hold them against us.
Yes, homosexual acts are objectively sinful, but none of us “chooses” our temptations. They didn't choose these feelings. Most of them have no idea why this happened to them and not their brother or sister. They wanted to like other people, but they always felt “different.” It was our job to be there with information, with real help and with prayer and we failed.
It is our fault that in 1963 when the therapists knew how to prevent and treat same-sex attraction that we didn't care. We knew who was homosexual and we left them in their glass closets. We abandoned them to their suffering. They lived through years of teasing, humiliations, lies, rejection and shame. Of course, “coming out” feels like a solution, acceptance feels better than rejection, but “coming out” is really giving up hope. Why did they give up hope? Because we never gave them solid reasons to hope. We just added to their shame until the burden became unbearable. Most of all we didn't pray for them as we should have. I have found that speaking of repentance also moves sympathetic audiences. When I spoke in this vein in Mexico the audience spontaneously responded, committing themselves to prayer.
Putting a Face on the Philosophy
Third, I listened to each of her objections and answered them as fully as possible. For every fact I had a story, either personal or taken from the literature. We must put a face on the suffering and the successes. We say same-sex attraction is a psychological developmental disorder but we don't act like we believe it. When I pointed out the problematic behaviors — infidelity, sexual addiction, sexually transmitted diseases, psychological disorders, substance abuse problems — I always linked them back to origins of same-sex attraction. The extreme behaviors are symptoms. The more wounded the child, the more that child needed early intervention, protection, and help and didn't get it.
Fourth, when I explained that intentionally making a child to be permanently fatherless or motherless was violence against the child, I could see that in spite of herself she knew what I was saying was true. As we talked, I discovered another way to approach the subject, namely that gay marriage is brought to us by the same people who told us there would be no negative consequences if we adopted divorce on demand, the sexual revolution, abortion, etc. Now we have 30 years of these “experiments” on children and the results have been disastrous. I told her about the results of Judith Wallerstein's studies on the effects of divorce on children. I talked about the effects of the sexual revolution on the health of young women — HPV and cervical cancer, abortion and breast cancer. Why should we trust people who have lied to us in the past, caused and are still causing terrible suffering? I could tell by her eyes that she knew what I was talking about because she lives with the victims.
Finally, I pointed out that this is a battle between two philosophical points of view — Thomistic realism and Post Modernist Deconstruction. We oppose calling the relationship between two persons of the same sex a marriage because we believe in human nature and natural law. We believe that men and women are different. There is no better evidence of the difference than the striking differences between the gay male community and the lesbian community. She smiled because she knew what I was saying is true. Post Modernist Deconstructionists don't believe in truth; they believe that marriage, motherhood, family, man, women are just hegemonic ideas that were invented by the oppressor class — ideas which have no roots in reality (because reality is irrelevant), ideas that can be changed or discarded. We are fighting for our entire world view against a world view that is dangerous because its proponents don't care who gets hurt.
The tyrant judges who impose the gay agenda follow Post Modernist reasoning and reject reality. The young woman was an English major, a religion minor; she knew what I was talking about. The students have been indoctrinated, but in their hearts most have doubts. I remember when I was exposed in philosophy to the idea that we really can't know anything for sure, that all is merely perception. I came out of the stuffy classroom into a beautiful spring day, golden sun, green grass, pink blossom and I knew that the philosopher was blinded by too much speculation. He could not acknowledge what was obvious to the smallest child. The world is real.
We must not be afraid to confess our past failures. We must rededicate ourselves to prayer and to sharing our hope, even in the midst of the fierce political battles in which we are engaged. It is not what we are against that shapes who we are, but what we are for. It is our hope that forces us to refuse to call the relationship between persons of the same-sex a marriage. We are for reality, for truth, and for love. This is where we must stand.
Mrs. Dale O'Leary is an internationally known speaker and freelance writer, editor of Heartbeat News, author of The Gender Agenda: Redefining Equality and The Art of Raphael Coloring Book. Her conversion story appears in Spiritual Journeys. She is currently working on a book on forgiveness.
