Oh, I think the world will tell you when it comes to homosexuality,
you only really got two options:
Option number one, you can hide in the closet out of fear,
that if anyone knew you felt that way, they would hate you and be bigoted against you
or if you don't want to live in a closet, and frankly who would, it's not a very comfortable living arrangement,
then come out of the closet, embrace your sexual attractions as your identity,
forget about God, the Church and the Bible and do whatever you want with your body.
So those are your options, gay pride or gay shame.
Now make your choice.
Now imagine you feel kind of stuck in the Middle here . OK, wait a minute,
yeah, I don't really want to reject God, but I mean, gay shame? Is that my only option?
Shame, I mean, why should I feel ashamed of an attraction I never chose?
It's not like I woke up it’s like, “Oh, it's Tuesday, I think I'll be attracted to this person today.”
No, you don't choose your attractions, just your behavior,
so why should you feel shame at something you never chose?
Will people hate you for having these feelings?
I'm sorry, yeah, sometimes they will.
You know, and unfortunately, these people are out there.
You see them on TV with their signs: “God hates gays,” and I’m like, "No, God hates your stupid sign, OK."
You know that's what he hates.
But the problem is fanatics like that make the world believe that if you believe in traditional marriage, you're a hateful homophobic bigot.
But is this the case? I don't think so.
In fact, not long ago, I went to a store to buy a frame of a painting that an artist had made for me,
of Pope John Paul II and I put the big painting down on the desk and the framer came out
and he took one look at it and he got kind of quiet and he said “Oh,
Pope John Paul II.” He said “I used to be a Catholic boy, but
the Church doesn't want me anymore.”
I said, "Well, what do you mean the Church doesn't want you?"
And he opened his heart up to me about homosexuality and I said, "No. The Church wants you,
this is your home. God loves you. I love you."
And he was like “What church do you go to?”
And I told him, "Oh, it's Saint Mary's.
You should come with me to Mass sometime with my family," and we had a wonderful conversation.
A couple weeks later, I came back and I saw him there: "Hey, how you doing?"
And he said, "You remembered my name?"
And I said, "Yeah, how you been?"
And we had a fantastic conversation. About ten minutes into it, his eyes started to turn a little red and moist
and he said, "Can I hug you?" I said, "Absolutely." He came up behind the counter around to me,
and just gave me this huge hug, this was just a beautiful moment.
And I think that he was so touched because he knew
I loved him and I loved him enough to tell him
the truth that your sexual attractions are not your identity.
that if I define myself by my sexual attractions, I don't know, my life is gonna get real confusing real fast.
Because if I'm attracted to a woman who is not my wife, is that my identity?
If I drive by a pornographic billboard and I think she's pretty, like, is that my identity?
No! The world is telling us that, like if you experience this feeling, that's who you are.
There's all these different identities you can have.
But the fact is the Catholic church doesn't think there's fifty-eight different types of people in the world.
Well, there’s gay persons and lesbian persons, bisexual persons, transgender persons, and so on.
Now, the Church is not gonna deny that some people have certain experiences, inclinations, and attractions,
but what the Church affirms is that a person is a rational being.
But what that means is there's really only three kinds of persons.
There's divine persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
there's angelic persons: the holy angels and the fallen angels (the demons),
and then there's human persons: made male and female in the image and likeness of God.
And so, if you're a human who has homosexual attractions, you know what kind of person you are?
You’re a son of God or you're a daughter of God. That is the deepest truth about your identity.
And you might think, "Well, that's nice and everything, but what does that mean on a day-to-day basis?
I basically either have to obey the Church and live a life of loneliness and desolation
or disregard the Church and face damnation? Are these my only two options: damnation or desolation?"
Well, thankfully, those aren’t the only two choices.
In fact, it might sound surprising, but the Church is not telling anybody that they can't love.
In fact, I would argue that the Catholic Church is just about one of the only institutions on earth
that's actually challenging us all to truly love.
But the fact is, I think, our idea of love often needs to be redeemed.
Look at what Pope John Paul II had to say about love.
"We must not forget that love for a human being must also contain certain elements of struggle.
Struggle for the beloved human being and his or her true good.”
The difficulty is the world tells us that sex equals love
and if you can’t have sex, then you're not really loving.
But the fact is sometimes abstinence is a tremendous expression of sacrificial love.
This is hard to see though, because our world is so hypersexualized.
I mean think about it. You turn on the TV: every product, every car, every piece of gum, this deodorant,
everything becomes sexualized and it's just gotten ridiculous.
I was at a store and I saw a magazine there. It was like a craftsmanship, wood working magazine for carpentry,
and it said on the cover that inside were the "Blueprints for Sexy Shutters,"
and I’m like, "Oh come on. I mean, is this what we've come to: sexy shutters?
And could you imagine if you were at home and one of your friends came over
and he came in your kitchen and he said, "Wow, you know, you have to really sexy shutters in your kitchen."
And you’d be like, "Wow, like you're a really weird friend."
But this is the culture that we live in. Products are sexualized, our friendships are over-sexualized.
If you're a guy and you really like hanging out with another guy and you really enjoy being in his company,
people are like, “Hey, ya kinda having a little bromance going over there?”
"No, we're not, this is a healthy masculine friendship."
And the same is happening in other places. Well, you know, girls hanging out with a lot of girls.
"Well, you know you seem to spend a lot of time with her. I mean, you really seem to be drawn to her.
Are you having like a girl crush over there?"
And what people don't understand is that you might not have heard this before,
but you're supposed to be attracted to members of the same sex.
You heard that correctly because God made them very good and there's so much about us that's attractive.
Your wit, your humor, your personality, even your beauty is supposed to be attractive
and not every attraction is sexual.
In fact, I knew a guy who lived a very actively promiscuous gay lifestyle
and after years of this, he said, "You know what I realized after all this time?"
He said, "I realized that wasn't really homosexual. He said I realized I was homo emotional.
I was longing for the attention, the approval, the affection, and the admiration of another man,
which I never received from my own father.
and the world has taught me to sexualize my problems."
Now I'm not saying from this, that nobody has sexual attractions for members of the same sex,
but simply that not all attractions are sexual.
And so for those people who do have sexual attractions, where does this leave them?
Some people think, "Well, what does this mean? You know, I can't, I can't love,
we can't get married, I mean what does the Church hate us? Is the Church bigoted against us?
I mean what about, you know, 'marriage equality?" Well, I think the problem with marriage equality
is that that slogan might fit well on a bumper sticker, but it really doesn't say anything, and here's why:
If I wanted to marry two women, are you in favor of marriage equality for us?
Most people would say, "Well no, Jason. I mean, if you can't make up your mind and that's not really a marriage."
OK, fair enough. Let’s say I pick one
and we wanna have a marriage that's open.
In other words, we'll marry each other, but we're open to having affairs with other people mutually, we’re agreed to this.
Do you think that's a marriage? Are you in favor of marriage equality?
Most people would say, "No, you gotta be faithful." OK, well let’s say I'll be faithful,
but we don't want it to be permanent.
Instead of, you know, entering into wedlock we're gonna have kind of a wed-lease,
kinda like a ten-year marriage license and if things are working out after ten years, we’ll get another one
and if they're not working out, well then, no hard feelings.
Most people say, "No, marriage also needs to be permanent."
OK. I saw a woman in the news recently who married herself. Is that a real marriage?
And for most of these cases do you hate these people? Are you bigoted against them?
No, because it’s not about hatred, it’s not about bigotry.
It's about one thing: What is marriage?
And in all these cases, I just presented to you, you'll notice the question is not, may they get married,
as if it's a question of permission. The question is, can that be a real marriage?
It's a question of possibility. So it's not about, you know, equality and fairness, it's about what is marriage?
And in order to answer this question, we can't simply be guided by our sentiments, and our emotions, and our heart.
We also use, need to use, our intellect.
Because if marriage means anything, then it means that some things aren't marriage.
And so the question is where did it come from? Is it simply a human institution ratified by the government?
Or is marriage from God the Father?
And if it is, then what the Church teaches is that when it’s talking about marriage,
it is not primarily talking about what two people do: they exchange vows and they stay together,
but primarily what marriage is, is what two people become:
A visible image of Christ’s love for his bride, the Church.
Earlier in the program, we had talked about how this love, when it's sexual, should reflect God's love.
It should be free, total, faithful, and fruitful.
Now, two people of the same sex could be faithful to one another.
They could enter into a relationship without being forced by another person.
But the question is, can their bodies totally give themselves to the other?
Can their sexual union, by nature, be fruitful?
And the answer is no. And this is not about hate speech or bigotry, it's just about biology.
Because marriage is not consummated by two people doing something sexual.
A marriage is consummated by the two becoming one flesh.
And some will argue, "Well, the Church just needs to be a lot more tolerant than it is."
But you were not created to be tolerated. You were created to be loved.
And if you love somebody, you can't lie to them.
You can’t pretend a false compassion to be more merciful than God is.
When you love someone, you have to speak the truth to them. And part of the truth of Christianity is the Cross,
and this, no doubt, is one: to pick up your cross and follow him.
It's difficult and this suffering comes in life—when our wills don't match up to the will of God.
And this happens in all of our lives. And at these critical moments, we are faced with this question:
Do I love God to the abandonment of my own will
or do I love my own will to the abandonment of God's will?
And at these points in life, what we need more than anything, is fellowship.
Because we can live without sex but we cannot live without intimacy.
Fellowship, friendship, people who love us enough to speak the truth to us and lead us closer to Christ.
And you know the Catholic Church has canonized people as saints who have been from all walks of life.
We've got kings who are saints, we’ve got slaves who became saints,
we have prostitutes, and virgin martyrs who became saints.
And I look forward to the day in the Catholic Church where there are canonized saints
who experienced homosexual attractions and chose to glorify God with their bodies.
No doubt this is difficult, but in those moments of your life, when you sometimes don't accept yourself,
and you don’t feel accepted by others, know that God is always the one who accepts you, that he loves you,
that he has a plan for your life,
and on behalf of anyone who has ever expressed any hatred or bigotry towards you,
I ask your forgiveness on behalf of the Church, for the times that we have failed to love you properly.
Because I'll tell you, I grew up in an all boys high school.
And, at the time, it was an extremely homophobic environment.
We were all so insecure, "You're gay." "No, you’re gay." "No, you're gay."
You know what we were being? There's actually a theological word for it, it comes from the Greek "idiotes"
and in English, it's "idiot". OK, that's what we were being.
And so as a result of this, I need to ask your forgiveness.
And I've outgrown that garbage, but unfortunately, some people haven’t.
And so we need your friendship in our life. And I hope you'll realize that you could use ours as well.
Because I'm sick and tired of the media telling us that we all hate each other because that's not true.
We love you and we need you in our lives as well, and the Church is your home.
You’re called to communion and let's do this thing together. No more of this "they" and "us", "we" and "them",
all it is "us"—the family of God with all our different crosses stumbling together, through life,
trusting in the Father who has a plan for each one of us.