New York, New York – The New York Times recently printed an op-ed from John Gehring, a Roman Catholic commentator and author, wondering aloud if the church would ever fully embrace the LGBT movement. After many years of providing expert commentary on the Vatican and its various policies, Gehring’s professional assessment is that yes, the Vatican will come to a full embrace of the queer. The reason, for Gehring, is that Pope Francis has given subtle clues to his evolution on the topic of sodomy, the most astonishing of which is his embrace of the ‘LGBT’ term.
As Gehring writes, “Well, last week, the Vatican used ‘L.G.B.T.’ for what is believed to be the first time ever in a document prepared for a major gathering of bishops and young people in October. ‘Some L.G.B.T. youth,’ it reads, want to ‘benefit from greater closeness and experience greater care from the church.’
As the Vatican commentator points out, this may very well be the first time the Roman Catholic headquarters has used the term, “LGBT.”
Many people are wondering exactly how ground-breaking or earth-shattering that is, perhaps not convinced this signals an evolution in thought. However, the homosexual agenda in America did not gain any momentum or commandeer any power in America until it successfully changed the terminology from sodomy and homosexuality to the initialism, LGBT.
Using LGBT as the term for gross sexual deviancy had many benefits. The initialism began to replace common nomenclatures like “gay,” and “queer” in the 1980s, which had already begun to replace the more scientifically precise and biblically-accurate term, sodomy, in the 1960s.
The first benefit of using the initialism is that it solidified sexually deviant behavior of all stripes. Whether it was men lying with men or women lying with women (different psychological problems underly homosexual behavior between the sexes, and usually have different motivations and outworking), bisexuality (which simply does not fit into the paradigm of “sexual orientation,” thereby fitting into the 21st Century narrative of sexual ethics like a square peg in a round hole), and trans (and its nearly unlimited forms from transvestitism, transgenderism, transsexuality, or even transpeciesism). Instead of having to defend every one of these aberrant, asinine deviations from normalcy and morality (defending anal intercourse between males certainly requires a different apologetic from defending the notion that a man can be a woman by only the virtue of his false self-identification). The term, LGBT – especially when combined with “Q” as first added in 1996 – makes an immoral union for any and all perversions of the only kind of true sexual relationship that happens exclusively between post-pubescent opposite-sex partners.
The second benefit of using the LGBT initialism is that it puts distance in the mind between the sexual deviancy itself and the subject being discussed. The term sanitizes or whitewashes concepts like male-to-male anal penetration or grown, bearded men dressing like little girls, or the butch lesbian who has marred her feminine beauty but isn’t convincing anyone she’s a man. Similarly, the term makes the sin sound like a mere condition, like HIV, ALS, HPV, or RAS. It makes the most scientifically indefensible behavior in the world (the concept of two same-sex creatures trying to have intercourse) seem clinical. In other words, it gives sodomy more dignity than it deserves.
That the Vatican would embrace language invented by homosexual activists to promote the homosexual agenda does not bode well for the Papists. Sadly, and to our shame, our evangelical leaders – from Russell Moore at the ERLC to Albert Mohler at SBTS – have already adopted the LGBT language long ago.
Gehring agrees, saying in the Times:
Not exactly breaking news, you might argue. But adopting “L.G.B.T.” is emblematic of an emerging shift in the church’s posture toward gay, lesbian and transgender people. Catholic teaching documents have typically used “homosexual” or referred to those with “homosexual tendencies,” which reduce a person’s multidimensional humanity to the mechanics of sex. Using the L.G.B.T. descriptor, often preferred by many gay, lesbian and transgender people, is a sign of respect.
This is in keeping with numerous overtures toward homosexuals by Francis, in a tone that is as softening on homosexuality as is the Southern Baptist Convention’s. Pope Francis gave the “Who am I to judge” answer regarding homosexuality (answer: the supposed head of the church). He’s met with people claiming to be “transgender” (you can’t really change your gender because it’s the same as your sex, and sex cannot be changed). And, Francis told one gay man that God made him that way and loves him just the way he is.
Other signs of the Vatican shifting its position on sodomy are present as well. Jesuit priest, James Martin, is banned from certain Catholic circles in the U.S. for being pro-sodomy, but was recently invited to speak at the World Meeting of Families (sponsored by the Vatican) in Dublin. Joe Tobin, the Cardinal in Newark, invited the LGBT to make a pilgrimage to the cathedral there. More and more lay Catholic leaders are speaking out or writing in advocacy for sodomy, with virtually no resistance from the Vatican or its power-structure.
