Same Sex Unions as parents. CNN to explore the issue

CNN is advertising an upcoming 'Solidad O'Brien Investigates' special entitled "Gary & Tony Have a Baby". The documentary is being previewed at 'Newfest: a LGBT Film Festival in New York. I believe that it is to be aired on CNN on June 24th.


Watch for further details. I look forward to the broadcast. I do so, not to follow that old Irish  maxim 'know your enemy', rather to grow in my understanding of the reality of gay families today. It may not be a traditional configuration, but my
previous training as a social worker as well as my life experiences have taught me that children raised in any stable, loving and chaste relationship will be as normal as a child raised in a traditional family.


One cannot know the full truth of any social, moral or medical experiment until the matter is broadly studied, but if the state says that gay couples merit the same legal status as heterosexual marriages, then they are entitled to the same rights, privileges and responsibilities.


Please, before jumping into a polemic of posting in defense of either side of the LGBT / Orthodoxy argument, consider that we must all be open to understanding the truth - no matter whether our dogma presages will be reality of non-traditional families. Anecdotal stories abound on both sides of this debate because there is a greater truth at work: bad kids come from good families, and visa versa. If it is demonstrated through longitudinal studies that there is no harm, then children should be afforded the opportunity to be raised in loving, stable homes with any legally approved couple, willing and able to accept the challenge. This is most certainly a preferable option to aborting a child - irrespective of where one stands vis a vis sexual morality. God's approval does not in and of itself deny something being legally permitted: adultery being a powerful illustration of this. The Church need offer its sacraments only to those who its chooses as determined by our creeds and dogma, but history has taught that its authority should reach only as far as the walls of Church. This is how it should be.


Now... if Catholics individually or collectively want to exercise their right to free speech to argue for legislation that reflects their values, that is their right (and, I would add) obligation to do so.  However we live in a democracy, meaning that governments must strike a balance between the rights of the majority & minority. The Kingdom of God will not be imposed on this world... until He returns - an event promised to be beyond dispute when it comes. Until then, citizens perhaps acknowledge that        MAYBE.... and I stress MAYBE, this is the key to  reconciling the obligations of faith and rational citizenship for Catholics and secularists. It's an answer that seems just out of reach... but I'm sure it's in here somewhere. Maybe I'll find it as I take up Richard Neuhaus' last book "American Babylon: Notes of a Christian Exile".