GLSEN is a national organization whose stated goal is to “end [the] cycle of bigotry in K-12 schools.” My assignment was to attend workshops and other conference events, like the keynote speech, to find out exactly how GLSEN planned to achieve its goal.
The ballroom hushed as Robert F. Chase, president of the National Education Association, was introduced. In his keynote speech, Chase talked about the name-calling, harassment and fear experienced by gay students and the importance of promoting safe schools in cooperation with GLSEN.
“This is not some special interest or radical agenda I'm talking about,” he insisted. “It's a matter of basic human rights and decency. This is not a matter of promoting a, quote, 'unsafe and abhorrent lifestyle,' as one of our members put it, but a matter of protecting one of the most vulnerable populations from unsafe and abhorrent behavior. It is not a matter of 'recruiting' gay or lesbian students or teachers, but of retaining them … it's a matter of protecting all children.”
As I listened to Chase, I hearkened back to my first day of 7th grade when after barely settling into my school bus seat, an 8th grade boy called me “four eyes” and deliberately knocked my glasses off my face. That day marked the beginning of a fear-filled year in my life as I went to school each day terrified of name-calling, food fights and physical attacks. Remembering the isolation and insecurity of those days, I could genuinely empathize with Chase's concerns for homosexual students. As he cited gay youth suicide and dropout statistics, I understood only too well how someone might choose destructive methods of dealing with fear in a school environment. I wished someone had been there to protect me all those years ago.
Chase's goal was a noble one: to make schools safer for all teachers and students. So why did I feel confused whenever he said the word “protection”? Later that day, I attended a workshop on how to integrate gay-friendly curriculum into grades K-6 social studies. The workshop leader enthusiastically presented a sample K-3 lesson plan that advised educators to help students “recognize diverse family constellations” by showing photographs of different families, including one headed by two lesbians. Like Chase, the instructor seemed sincere in his desire to teach children about the vast diversity of the world around them and to respect other people's differences. So why was I uneasy whenever he used the term “diversity”?
In short, I wondered how one argues against rationales that seem so plausible? How do I, as a Catholic, discern GLSEN's suggestions for protecting children and teaching them to 'appreciate diversity' and 'respect others' in light of Church teaching — and my own fallen nature? What of the fact that God created a very diverse world? What of Jesus' command to love one another?
In praying and meditating on these issues, I think the key to discernment lies in not confusing protection with promotion, or diversity with deviance.
There is no question that children must be legitimately and properly protected from physical deprivation and danger, emotional suffering and spiritual harm. Regarding the last point, our Lord sternly warns in Mark 9:42 that “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were hung round his neck and he were thrown into the sea.”
The problem with GLSEN's definition of protection is that it does not safeguard children from spiritual harm and so is not true protection.
Rather, it is “protection” based on “sexual orientation.” This is a false premise of protection that cannot exist apart from the child's understanding of “sexual orientation.” In other words, you can't protect someone based on their sexual orientation until they claim one, and they can't claim one until they know what it is. To teach children about sexual orientation is to give scandal and cause them to sin. As I heard so many people talking about “protection” at the conference, I couldn't help thinking about millstones.
The very first sentence of the Bible tells us what God thinks of diversity. In Genesis 1:1 we read, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” — and He got on a roll from there. Over the next six days, He created a vastly diverse world filled with light, darkness, water, dry land, vegetation, celestial bodies, fish, birds, animals, insects, and, finally, His crowning achievement: man, whom He created in His own image and likeness.
God could have stopped and rested then, but he didn't. Why? Because He needed just a little more diversity, namely, a similar, yet different, companion for the man. So He took a rib from the man and made a woman, and only then did He rest.
The creation story tells us that God is the very source of diversity and that man's diversity includes two complementary sexes. By not resting until He created woman, God teaches us that diversity is a good that reaches its pinnacle in opposite-sex, not same-sex, pairings. At the GLSEN conference, the term “diversity” was used in reference to same-sex relationships that are not in harmony with God's creative plan. In that context, therefore, it really meant “deviance.”
In John 15:12, Christ says, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” Elsewhere in the Gospels, Jesus says that the second greatest command is to love one another. Surely loving others includes showing respect for them, but how do we respect people whose behaviors clash with our beliefs?
The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that we must treat homosexual persons with respect, compassion and sensitivity, and that we cannot assume that the origins of homosexuality are exclusively genetic or behavioral, or that homosexuality is freely chosen. At the same time, the Catechism also teaches that homosexual tendencies are intrinsically disordered, that homosexual acts are expressly forbidden, and that homosexual persons are called to chastity. As a heterosexual woman, it's tempting to pride myself on not having the same problems homosexuals do — until I realize that the same rules also apply to me. I'm subject to temptation, just like them. The Church forbids me to engage in heterosexual behavior apart from marriage and calls me to chastity, just like them.
The difference isn't whether we break the rules or not. It's in realizing we do, and then repenting.
