Dear Editor:
I have read Zenon Zawada’s fine reporting from Ukraine for many years. But I want to give a counterview to his passionate letter to the editor “ ‘False binaries’ and naivety” (January 10). The fact is that legalizing homosexual marriages or not permitting prayers at government meetings or public schools will not hasten the decline of Western civilization.
Separation of Church and state has been a boon to America and Western Europe for it avoided many bloody conflicts. Just take a look at what is going on in the Middle East and its trampling of human rights in the name of religion. When Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire in the fourth century, the first thing the orthodox Christians did was start killing the heretics. Western values? The corruption in the Catholic Church during the Middle Ages is legendary.
As a reporter decades ago I wrote a number of articles about a rather well-known homosexual priest. That got me interested in homosexuality, a subject I knew nothing about. I discovered that homosexuality is not a suit of clothes you put on but has deep psychological and probably physical roots. There have been many homosexuals who wanted to change and went into therapy. The statistics I saw said therapy was almost always unsuccessful. Homosexuality also exists in the animal kingdom.
The bane of homosexuality, especially decades ago, has been its promiscuity. Isn’t a major purpose of marriage to keep couples together and reduce promiscuity? And if we are talking about morality, what about the fairness issue? In my time, many hospitals with a patient on the critical list would permit only family members to visit. So the dying homosexual died alone. Would you believe that according to research homosexuals who have adopted children, on the whole, make good parents? It figures, for they made a conscious decision to adopt and were willing to do all that cumbersome paperwork.
I remember as a teenager hearing someone was a homosexual would send shivers of horror through me. It seemed a perversion of nature. Yet the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its list of mental dysfunctions years ago.
There is no war against religion in the U.S.A. Rather, there is an erosion of faith and betrayal of faith and trust by the “religious.” See that fine movie “Spotlight,” and you will know what I mean. Pope Francis is a champion of the poor and has spoken out against capitalist greed. God bless him. But have you noticed he is not touching such issues as a married priesthood, women priests, contraception, and a lot of the ancient mythology many Christians don’t believe anymore? Isn’t that a reason why so many good men and women have been lost to the Church? One quarter of “cradle Catholics” leave the Church.
So the times they are a changin’. It is time to tolerate diversity. To cling to the past is to commit suicide. The good old days were not that good. Anybody who thinks so is naïve.
Stuart. Fla.