Notes From D.R. | Random Thoughts on the Passing Scene

Traditionalists and people of faith who feel that elites are forcing them to accept homosexuality are fighting back. Unfortunately, it appears their preferred methods of retaliation are more erroneous than effective.

Last Thursday, a private Christian high school in Ontario, California, expelled a student after discovering that her mother has a same-sex partner. The school’s headmaster informed the "two mommies" of fourteen-year-old Shay Clark that, according to school guidelines, pupils cannot attend the school if their parents behave in ways "immoral or inconsistent with a positive Christian lifestyle [including] cohabitating without marriage or in a homosexual relationship." Earlier this week, the Vatican announced plans to issue a new edict barring all homosexuals, even celibate ones, from becoming priests, apparently in response to the numerous priest-pedophilia scandals that have been uncovered since the beginning of the decade.

In both cases, these religious institutions have a right to make such decisions, a right that should be respected, a right that will not be respected by gay advocacy groups and the far left. However, in both cases, these religious institutions are misguided.

In the Ontario case, one does not have to be an ACLU moonbat to wonder if the school’s policy is being applied consistently. Is the school also expelling students whose parents are having extramarital affairs or downloading hardcore pornography? What if the parents are deviating from a Christian lifestyle by embezzling money at work or shooting heroin at home? Or are the offspring of homosexual parents the only targets?

With regard to the Vatican, the new edict is effective is reinforcing traditional Catholic doctrine concerning homosexuality, but it won’t do much to reduce the problem of pedophilia. Simply put, one cannot tell by looking which candidate for the priesthood is a potential molester. In addition, the edict’s logic rests upon the notion that all homosexuals pose a risk to young children, ignoring the fact that there are plenty of gays who are aghast at the very idea of molestation. In this case, the Vatican is engaging in the same sort of shortsighted thinking that leads to such things as "don’t ask, don’t tell" and the contretemps over gays in the Boy Scouts. (Assuming that all homosexuals are potential pedophiles is sort of like assuming that all African-Americans in New Orleans are potential looters, no?)

While the Vatican’s edict is misguided, they are well within their rights to establish such guidelines, which is why I have little sympathy for Andrew Sullivan and others who have decided to toss rhetorical fireballs in Rome’s direction. Castigating the Catholic Church for alleged homophobia is counterproductive and foolish: the Church, mistaken as it may be, is not acting out of homophobia, but out of what it believes to be principle.

In the long run, these actions will do little to stem the greater societal push towards acceptance of homosexuality. These cases are little more than examples of wise people making unwise decisions. However, the makers of these decisions do have a "right to choose"–and aren’t "progressives" supposed to support that?

UPDATE: More from the Globe.