In a letter to the editor 12/31/13 Smolow disagrees with the Courier and Catholic Holy Ghost Prep about firing a gay teacher who violated the rules of Holy Ghost and announced he was marrying another man. Smolow objects on moral grounds. Whose morality? What moral principles?

There is far more to morality than Smolow seems to grasp. Morality is a set of principles to guide decisions. The principles of Holy Ghost are different than the principles of Smolow, ergo, – different moralities. Holy Ghost refuses to employ married gay people as teachers. Smolow’s principles are far less known than those of the Catholic Church but from his objections we know he believes love and commitment between heterosexual men and women is identical to the love and commitment between two homosexual males. He glosses over or just doesn’t get the difference between heterosexuals and homosexuals or that there is a huge divide between homosexual and heterosexual love.

It’s impossible for heterosexual men to love men. It is not a different kind of love, it’s an impossibility. Same for the love of a homosexual man towards a woman. Impossible.

There are also huge differences between the sexual practices of heterosexuals and homosexuals nor do homosexual men experience passion towards women nor can heterosexual men exhibit passion towards homosexual men. These are not only differences in degree, they are enormous substantive differences in type and sex-based behaviors, which are impossible to equate or compare. There are bright-lines between heterosexuals and homosexuals. Smolow needs to identify, study and grasp those differences instead of blithely telling us they are  equivalent. They are as different as sticks and holes.

Smolow correctly believes the Church would not fire  heterosexual employees who “cohabit outside of marriage”, heterosexual being the key idea driving the actions of the church. Smolow purposely switched the narrative from homosexual to heterosexual sex practices. 

Smolow wants someone to force Holy Ghost to hire back the fired homosexual teacher. How would he respond if homosexuals were forced to hire heterosexuals? How would he respond if homosexuals were forced to marry straight people?

Smolow also knows but avoids the idea that the fired gay is a teacher who has the power and the duty to impart values, virtues and attitudes in impressionable young unformed minds. What values, virtues and attitudes would he teach?  Certainly not those of Catholicism.

It is the normalization of homosexual sex practices, practices different in the extreme that would be placed in the students minds by a gay who differs with the Catholic church. The Church is in religious opposition to those acts.   

 A heterosexual teacher has a different value system, a different set of moral principles, and many other differences which cannot be dismissed by not mentioning the differences and which are far greater than anatomy which may even appear to be identical.

So there are several impossibly different sets of moral principles as well as very different sexual feelings at work and those impossibilities justify the different moral basis for both Holy Ghost and Ron Smolow. Who is right? Holy Ghost. 

Smolow cannot accept the prohibition against gay marriage. Holy Ghost cannot accept a married gay teacher. Enter the government seeking to square the circle and eliminate the impossible differences. That gets into the greatest un-reality show on earth. Government attempting to dictate morality.

Part of reality is government can force the culture to accept gay marriage but it cannot change the difference in the nature of a marriage between a man and a woman to equal marriages between gay males or females. Neither God, government nor Smolow can do that.

The differences between marriage and gay marriage are existential differences that cannot change.Reality is not subject to it’s definitions meaning although definitions should and usually do parallel reality but reality is exempt from the definitions.

One of the seminal events in America’s attitudes towards gay people was the 1969 Stonewall Manhattan riots against police oppression. It changed the way police acted. Eventually it changed the way gays were treated under the law and Smolow also correctly includes some of those changes but Holy Ghost is not engaged in police oppression. In his objections against Holy Ghost, Smolow writes about “community norms” which have certainly changed towards gays. What hasn’t changed are the differences between gays and straights. What will never change are the different sets of moral principles despite government intervention into many areas where it does not belong and should not go.

Moral fault lines exist for many reasons, not all of them bad. Men and women are different. Gays and straights are different too, in far more ways than gender. Smolow needs to step back and get more in his world than the wrong idea that gay marriage is identical to straight marriage.    

 

Views: 91