Vatican’s Antigay Teachings = Therapy + Prolonged Therapy - and - Makes Opponents to Marriage Equality + Gay Hangings

We often think that LGBTQ people are a minority group in the world. However, the facts do not seem to support this idea. More Than 90% of People Have Some Degree Homosexual Orientation Read more. This appears that it may be true because of the reactions of the Opponents to Marriage Equality. They tend to be overall resistant to learning any facts about human sexuality, in fact it seems that the less knowledge the better. The question to be asked is Why? Why not learn and discuss as much as possible to achieve a better understanding among people about human sexuality? But sadly this is not the case. This is similar to Pope Benedict XVI’s dismissive remarks about gender studies, December 2008 and his unwillingness to respond to or dialogue with Tony Blair, April 2009. If Pope Benedict XVI believes he has the truth about human sexuality, why isn't he willing to teach us, talk to us, and to dialogue? Photo

I know a great number of LGBTQ people from all around the world, along with many of their parents, families and friends, including many of those who minister to them and researchers, psychologists and theologians besides who would jump at the chance to dialogue with Pope Benedict XVI on issues of human sexuality in order to create a better understanding among all people. The event alone would be the "wonder of the world" it would out do any space flight and it would do so much for human beings that would go on long after we are all dead and gone. It would out do the computer age in history. It does not make sense not to dialogue. Again, I mean no disrespect to anyone, particularly to Pope Benedict XVI. My one and only concern is for the well-being and safety of children that the harm that comes to them, because of the antigay teachings stops, immediately. Photo

Do these Opponents to Marriage Equality have something to hide? It is oblivious that it seems as though they do and it is directly related to human sexuality. So, it would seem that many of these Opponents to Marriage Equality are part of the 90% who share some degree of a homosexual orientation. The way they reacted against Marriage Equality sends flashes back to memories of the way I reacted before I came out. Of course, this is a generalization that simply cannot be true of everyone. But when people are resistant to learning about human sexuality red flags go up and the question becomes, Why? What is going on? Why be so hurtful to people you don't even know? Where is all this energy coming from to want to fight Marriage Equality? With a thorough and exhaustive study of the bible they will find that they cannot use the bible to say that it is against homosexuality. Any more than they can use the bible to say the sun revolves around the earth, as people tried to 400 years ago with Galileo. Marriage Equality is about nothing more than the importance of true love for everyone. How can this be bad? What is it about love that is so frightening? The truth is that all antigay teachings from whatever domination of Christianity including the Vatican are harmful to children who grow up to be gay (LGBT). There is plenty of documented evidence to support this fact and more research continues to reveal the same.

I have found this to be true in my own life, as a priest,

a clinical psychologist and from my extensive time in psychotherapy sessions, which in the end, it was discovered I would not have needed, if I had not been subjected to the Vatican's antigay teachings in my early childhood years. Photo

I am speculating that the reason for why there are Opponents to Marriage Equality is because likely as young children many of these Opponents were hurt also, by being raised in social environments influenced by antigay social and religious norms. I believe this may be the case for two reasons. The first, relates to the fact that 90% of people have some degree of a homosexual orientation in them and therefore would have been hurt in the same way to a degree as children who grow up to be LGBTQ adults. Secondly, we know that domestic violence is harmful to children, whether or not they were physically hurt or not. A child who just witnesses domestic violence suffers the same effects as those children who are physically harmed. The most recent research indicates that children subjected to hearing their parents yelling at each other suffer just as badly as those children who are physically abused as children.

I know the above from research data and from personal experience and years and years of documented psychotherapy. It took me into my 40’s to come to terms to these harmful effects of the Vatican’s antigay teachings. All through my years of psychotherapy, different therapists have asked me if I had been abused as a child. Each time, I searched my past early childhood years growing up, but I could not find anything abusive by my parents, relatives or anyone. Nothing! Nothing! Nowhere! Nothing! It was only at the New Ways Ministry Symposium, March 1997 when I learned that children, as young as 4 and 5 years of age, know that they are “different” who then grow up to be gay that I realized where the child abuse was that I experienced and that my psychotherapists detected but could not find. It begins by defining what feeling "different" means. What it means to feel “different” is that the child does not realize he or she is “gay” at 4 and 5 years of age, only that the child does not “fit end” in a very significant way, a way that is experienced as threatening. This feeling of “different” somehow or someway was connected to something they were doing that caused adults to react in ways of disapproval, even if it was not overtly conveyed to the child. However, it brought about for the child the fear of abandonment. Moreover, for a child the fear of abandonment is experienced as traumatizing and would have likely been repeated over and over again and again throughout the child's early childhood years. This is what I have been able identify in my own experience, which is consistent with the findings as defined by Richard Isay MD, Jack Drescher MD, Sidney Phillips MD and others. The feeling "different" I have previously explained in sections titled Developmental Narratives: Photo

For the heterosexual boy at the same age in early childhood years has hopes and aspirations of wanting to marry his mother. These innocent childlike expressions of love for his mother are affirmed and are experienced as acceptable to the mother and the other adults in the child's life at the time. The child is told that he cannot marry his mother but that some day he can meet someone like his mother who he can marry.

A Child's Life Growing Up Gay

This same situation for a gay male child, who is raised in a social environment that is influenced by antigay social and religious norms, his signs of affection for his father will be in a number of ways rejected, even scorned. In addition, not only will this boy be suffering from this kind of emotional abuse but he could also be physically abused, as well. When this male child expresses his desire to marry his dad he is likely to be told most emphatically in a shaming tone of voice that he cannot marry his dad that boys do not marry boys. The shock of this unforeseen forceful rejection of this male child’s most authentic and sincerest desire to express his love for his father can be quite traumatizing for him. Because it is an attack on the core of a human being most basic need to love and to be loved. This male child’s hopes and aspirations are not affirmed as acceptable, in fact they are considered unacceptable and offensive. Any child of either sexual orientation at this early age in childhood development will experience this kind of rejection as confusing and depending on intensity even traumatizing. This male child throughout his early childhood years is likely to experience this kind of rejection multiple times having different levels of severity because he does not understand what he is doing wrong. To a gay male child this kind of reaction is not only extremely hurtful but at the same time it most confusing, it does not make sense to him. There is no one who can help explain the overwhelming flood of emotions he experiences every time he reaches out to love. Ultimately a child will realize that he is not to trust his inner feelings to love and to be love that in fact as for many, he will come to the conclusion that he is "always wrong" about love. This is one of many defenses any child would enact as a form of protection from what is experienced in a child’s mind as a horrific onslaught of rejection. This leaves the child living in an "implicit" form of isolation from human connectedness or bonding. Read more Photo

I realized that this is where the child abuse was in my life. It was an implicit form of child abuse and it did not happen through any adults intentionally beheavor meaning to do me harm. There are many ways that a child who grows up to be gay (LGBTQ) may experience abuse. But this implicit form of child abuse is the most harmful. Because the child, as an adult, suffers the effects of child abuse, but does not realize what is wrong in his or her life, because they are unable to identify the source of the pain and abuse. They only know that something isn’t right and they have no peace of mind. And even though he or she may be close to many people in his or her life but may often feel alone and even isolated.

I realized later why the Trappist Abbot who I came out to in 1989 why he was quite surprised that I thought being “gay” was bad Read more The Abbot asked me repeatedly through our conversation if I was abused as a child or if someone told me “gay” was something heinous or bad. I told him no one ever said a word to me about being gay or homosexuality, except for what I learned later going to a Catholic grade school. The abuse that happened to me was an implicit form of abuse, nothing was explicit. Implicit is defined in Webster's Photo

1 a: capable of being understood from something else though unexpressed : implied implicit assumption> b: involved in the nature or essence of something though not revealed, expressed, or developed.

It was the harmful influence of the Vatican's antigay teachings that were expressed unintentionally, unknowingly in vague ways through my parents and other adults who surrounded my life when I was growing up, which were indeed, then and throughout my life, quite harmful and disruptive to my well-being. My parents were not the fault of this implicit form of child abuse that I suffered. As good Catholics, it was my parents' trust and faithfulness in the Catholic Church and the Vatican's antigay teachings that was responsible for my childhood implicit abuse. This is the same as for the children who were sexually abuse in the Cathloic Church, their parents, as good Catholics trusted that their children would be safe in Catholic Church and they were not. Photo

Implicit abuse happens in the way that a child is able to sense even the most subtlest shifts in people’s emotional demeanor, especially, when the adults are his or her parents, who the child is solely dependent on for life's basic needs and most importantly for love. A child is able to pick up (though they do not understand it) the emotional conflict when parents do not want to hurt the child, but inwardly the parents are disapproving of some aspect of the child’s behavior. The child is likely to experience this as conflictual and confusing in nature. The child experiences at the same time love but with it that something is seriously wrong about something he or she is doing. This type of situation is very unsettling for a child, because the child knows something is seriously wrong, but does not know what or now to stop it, in order to stop the possible overwhelming and flooding of unpleasant feelings the child experiences each time it happens.

It did take me a long time to realize and find the source of this implicit abuse, which came directly from the Vatican’s antigay teachings. I later realized why the Trappist Abbot thought that I must have been a victim of child abuse because of my firm belief that being "gay" was so bad. Because being a Catholic Abott, one would expect him to react in the same way that all the Vatican's hierarchy react to the topic of homosexuality, which is negatively. However, this Abbot was a convert to Catholicism, but only after his time in service in the Navy during World War II, therefore, his early childhood years would not have been affected by a social environment heavily influenced by the antigay teachings of the Vatican. La Trappe, France Thomas Merton Photo (Photo not of the Monastery I attended)

What I described above as a possible way this implicit form of child abuse happens and of course there are to be expected numerous variations of the same. Because research strongly indicates that 90% of people have some degree of a homosexual orientation, it would seem quite likely that many of the Opponents to Marriage Equality would experience to a degree some implicit form of this kind of child abuse though this is not a positive indication. And if the Opponents to Marriage Equality have a strong Christian background this would seem to be a stronger indication for experiencing this implicit form of child abuse, but there is no real proof that such is the case. Some possible significant signs that may be alerting to this form of implicit abuse would be (1) irrational, dismissive, distortion or vague misuse of facts, research data regarding human sexuality, (2) an unwillingness to dialogue to listen or reason and (3) expressive maybe uncontrollable anger, unwillingness or incapability to calmed down. It would seem that if 90% of people have some degree of homosexual orientation than our thoughts of thinking LGBT people, as a minority group would not be quite accurate. The more we study human sexuality the more we may find we are not all that different from one another, as people may need to believe is the case, today. Photo

Again, to repeat, I mean no disrespect to anyone, particularly to Pope Benedict XVI. My one and only concern is for the well-being and safety of children that the harm that comes to them, because of the antigay teachings stops, immediately. We do not need to wait another 400 years, like it did for Galileo for action to be taken. Not to add fuel to the fire, but if Catholic clergy were allowed to marry this would not take as long, because when it is your child's life that is threatened, you tend to move PDQ in achieving understanding and make needed changes. Because, as a parent, you are willing to talk to anyone and everyone to secure the well-being of your child and all children. Our Episcopalian family members in Christ have shown us the way that works for years and years, quite well. They have continual dialogues about these issues and many others topics besides just like any real family that values all its members, they make changes and protect all children. You will know that they are Christians by their love.

Written by Fr. Marty Kurylowicz, M.Div., M.S.