Pope Francis has endorsed same-sex unions.

Yes, but that does have to be definitively stated. Today is Friday but if Pope Francis said its Saturday we can simply accept he has probably got his days mixed up. Not every papal utterance is infallible and this is because, inter alia, they are not made ex cathedra. Plus, there are simply things that are ultra vires even for the pope; although, I do confess that Francis seems unaware of this.

 

I have a low opinion of Francis. But to be fair about this, I can understand where he's coming from. The issue is: can we and should we legislate morality when the immoral behavior does not overtly victimize anyone?

Some examples:
It is wrong for a man to look at a woman lustfully, but should there be a law against men ogling women? The woman has not been substantially and materially harmed.
It is immoral to become drunk, but should we arrest people who pass out drunk in their own homes? The drunkard harms only himself in this circumstance.
It is wrong to become angry, but should we have a law prohibiting and penalizing anger? There is no victim.

Similarly, it is immoral to commit homosexual acts with a consenting partner (or partners) in the privacy of one's bedroom, and Francis is (in effect) saying, 'Should there be a law against this, seeing that there is no clear victim?'

The legitimate purpose of law, as most see it nowadays, is to protect people from being harmed or victimized. When consenting adults wish to create a contractual relationship with one another, and when they agree to 'assume the risks' that may arise in conjunction with the performance of the contract, generally they should have the right to contract. And that's what a civil union is: a contract that grants legal rights (inheritance, hospital visitation, partnership authority, etc.) to the parties.

Let's face it: those people are going to do the same things in the bedroom whether they have a civil contract or not, and there is no law against such activity. The civil union is not about the bedroom activities per se, it's about legal status. If we want to 'legislate morality' on this, we'd need to pass laws prohibiting the bedroom activities and we'd also need to authorize police to look in bedroom windows to search out the lawbreakers.

(Note: there is a vast difference between the above and legalized abortion, since there is much evidence in the latter of an innocent victim losing his or her life! That is why the pro-life position is not one of 'legislating morality' but is all about protecting the innocent.)

If Francis were saying that homosexual marriage is okay, then I'd have a problem with it. Definitely! But a civil union is not a marriage. (A marriage is partly civil union but it is also much, much more.) Francis is saying that two adults of the same sex have the right to contractualize a lifelong commitment with each other.

 

Except these “unions” allow them to adopt children as a “married” couple.

 

It victimizes those who engage in the act, of course. They are more victims of the act than any of the rest of us. Engaging in sodomy is incredibly psychologically debilitating, spiritually dangerous, not to mention physically harmful. There is a reason both the OT and the NT Church have condemned it for the last 4000 years. If you truly have pity for them, you’ll help them to stop doing it.

 

That's a point I hadn't considered, and is something that should most definitely be excluded from a civil union. I have no knowledge one way or the other as to whether non-marriage 'civil unions' are being allowed to adopt.

But (point of clarification) are you speaking strictly of civil unions rather than marriages? Where is adoption by 'civil union' couples taking place? Because in the US (thanks to a few black-robed justices) actual same-sex marriages are now legal, and I fully oppose this.

My point is, a civil union (distinct from a marriage) can and should be defined in a way that excludes the possibility of adopting children.

 

Of course, what you say is true in a strict and technical sense. But I'm talking about victimization in a legal sense, which is the apropos standard since a 'civil union' is a legal construct and the law has little to do with the spiritual or psychological. Even the potential physical harms (such as getting HIV or rupturing a membrane) would fall under the category of 'acceptance of risk,' just as a patient undergoing surgery agrees in his contract with the doctors to accept the risk of possible harms from anesthesia, infection, etc. (malpractice excluded).

 

Perhaps it can be argued that in a secular sense there is no one harmed by two individuals of the same sex getting "married". However, it does harm society which it de-Christianises and is against the natural form of marriage between a man and a woman.

I think to call it a 'civil union' is playing around with semantics. What same-sex couples want is what they consider to be analogous to marriage.

Even if no harm is done in the secular sense, and I'm not sure it isn't, there is certainly harm in the moral sense. It is a very serious sin and puts the soul at grave risk of eternal damnation.

Here is another example of how the current pope is not good for the Catholic Church in particular or the Christian Church in general. By saying that civil unions are acceptable for same-sex couples he condones a most serious sin. When he asks, "Who am I to judge", he's one of the world's senior bishops and he should be judging sinners and warning them of the risks. He should be concerned with their salvation. He angrily condemns faithful Catholics who prefer the Extraordinary Form of the liturgy but says he doesn't mind homosexuals commiting their fornication.

 

Idk but it is my knowledge in some states civil unions do allow for adopting children. This is why I’m opposed to it. And someone as important as the pope blabbing off about civil unions without realizing the implications of it is damaging to traditional Christianity. Or maybe he really is a hippy liberal and doesn’t care if homosexuals adopt children. In which case he is a heretic and should be deposed by en ecumenical council like honorius was

 

What is the basis for this statement? According to the NIH:

If anyone wants to show that children in these situations are statistically more likely to suffer harm, they are facing a steep uphill battle.

 

Were those same sex parents also educated middle class? Usually these are the type of homosexuals that adopt children. Were they compared with normal parents that were in the same income bracket?


It doesn’t even matter though because that’s not what I’m talking about. Homosexual “unions” now blatantly parade a grave sin all over society. This is what children are going to be raised by. People that have no problem telling the whole world their abominable sexual practices. This is not me being hateful btw, Leviticus 18:22 says homosexuality is an abomination. Now, why would any Christian want children to be raised by people who commit sexual abominations? That’s beyond me. The harm it will do to those children spiritually cannot be measured scientifically. They will grow up to view a sexual abomination their parents openly practice as a good thing. Francis advocating for civil unions whilst knowing this very thing happens would’ve gotten him anathematized and deposed from the papal throne 80 years ago

 

That would be well but Francis has appointed a super majority of the Cardinal electors for the next conclave. Unless the unprecedented step of seating the various Patriarchs, Mars, etc. of the Eastern and Oriental rite churches is taken, one would suspect Francis' successor will be in his image. Or the Holy Spirit convicts the hearts of the electors.

 

What Christian in the West need is a strong Catholic Church. It is the largest Church and it will go a long way to have a strong doctrinally sound Catholic Church.

 

That’s an admission of a claim without evidence. You’re not looking at this right. Same-sex parental households constitute a tiny fraction of the total. The vast majority of immorality out there (including sexual immorality) happens, therefore, in opposite-sex parental households, just as a matter of simple math. There are a lot of kids in the social services system that need good homes and it would be wrong to deny them something that basic just because the prospective adoptive family happens to not fit the model of ‘biblical marriage’ (which is not an appropriate legal standard in a secular republic anyway). The current state of the evidence says, overwhelmingly, that those kids are better off being adopted by same-sex parental households than staying in the social services system. I’m not a huge fan of Francis, but his statements on the matter don’t amount to a change in a church teaching, and secular arrangements that nonetheless promote children’s welfare are something any religious person ought to support rather than condemn. Doing the latter without evidence is just bigotry, and if applied as policy would result in a nightmarish situation for untold number of children who need and deserve loving homes.

 

Would that be the same NIH that chose to misclassify deaths attributed to Covid, to any other preexisting condition in the patient? Is that the same NIH that is in favor of giving hospitals financial bonuses if they report higher Covid deaths, leading to a catastrophe of fraudulent inflated Covid statistics (which then play into further administration policies)? Is that similar to when the APA removed the guidance of homosexuality as a mental disorder in the 1970s as a direct result of APA voting manipulation? Is that similar to the APA now classifying pedophilia as a sexual orientation instead of a mental disorder (pulling back at the last minute due to backlash)?
https://fromthetrenchesworldreport....ion-or-preference-instead-of-a-disorder/63396

Anyone trusting secular institutions (at this point in time almost wholly filthy, degenerate, and evil), needs to be a bit more skeptical, shall I say a bit more critical and scientific. Religion matters. Ethics matter. Without religion today it is almost impossible for these people to avoid being evil. The NIH was recently caught harvesting human fetuses and selling them for body parts:
https://thefederalist.com/2021/08/0...-baby-harvesting-at-university-of-pittsburgh/

 

Since you don’t seem to be aware of it, I am posting the definition of the ad hominem fallacy here for your benefit (since you commit it over and over again on this forum, no matter how many times it’s pointed out to you):

Attacking the source is not a legitimate argument. Even a broken clock gets the time right twice a day. The link I provided was merely the NIH citing existing studies. The literature on this topic is voluminous. Harm is measured in the social sciences in terms of outcomes (that’s what makes them measurable). If you’re aware of a similar mountain of studies that came to the opposite conclusions, by all means, share them. Present your proof. Otherwise, objecting to the mere fact that NIH cited it has no merit, nor does the ‘Whataboutism’ of bringing up the APA, which I neither mentioned nor cited.

 

In this case it is indeed a legitimate argument, because you are citing findings from the NIH, and relying on everyone else to assume it has authority and scientific credibility. I replied with counterpoints that the scientific establishment in the US is rotten and corrupt to the core with atheistic pragmatism and totally post-Christian (and therefore post-rational and post-objective) approach to science.

Without Christianity, science cannot function, as we see with the NIH.

Therefore you’ll have to do a lot more than merely name-drop it to convince us of its authority on same-sex parenting. As far as I know, it is just as credible on that as the medical establishment is on COVID, on homosexuality-as-normal, and on pedophilia-as-normal. You’ve your work cut out in proving that it is oddly valid on that one singular point of research. Until that time, the rest of us don’t have to take it as credible.

 

Okay then, I'll give it a crack.

Your NIH has a paper that collects a number of independent studies after 2000 assessing the impact a family has on child well-being. Their conclusion is that a stable family has noticeable benefits for a child's well-being. I assume you're willing to accept that conclusion, regardless of its source, but if not you can look at the independent studies yourself, they're all listed. I'm sure, as a Christian forum, we're happy to accept children raised by married parents are better off than children raised by one parent, split families, or state guardians. Importantly, children who are not adopted and are instead raised as wards of the state are far more likely to be delinquent, develop substance abuse, detach from authority and education, and develop a number of other social problems. The conclusion there is that the great harm is rising rates of divorce, family conflict and instability in parental relationships. It logically extends that gay adoption would need to be worse than the alternative, not worse than the nuclear family that already can adopt and are choosing not to.

But let's take the higher burden first. Are gay parents worse than heterosexual parents (from an outcomes perspective), which, again, is not actually the debate. At the surface level, some literature actually indicates the opposite - that adopted children of gay parents have better outcomes, on average. But, as you have highlighted, there is some tension with the credibility of this research. Doug Allen (Simon Fraser University, Canada) has an assessment of near every respected same-sex parenting study from 1995-2013, that concludes many of those studies have crippling flaws. His conclusion, however, is not that gay parents are inferior, but rather that there's no meaningful demonstrable difference between the two. His study is also evidence that the mainstream scientific establishment, which platforms Allen's study regularly, shows a resistance to politicising science. It shows that scientists, even "corrupt, atheistic pragmatists" are critical of biased research on this issue, and willing to call it out and correct it. Also note, there were of course biased studies on the opposite side, so it's hardly a one-sided conspiracy - American academia is increasingly a hotbed of partisanship.

Allen's conclusions have been repeated regularly by other reviews; Such as this 2014 American study, this Australian study, and this 2010 study that only looks at school performance.

Okay, so does that mean scientists have found no harms associated with same-sex parenting? Well no, that's not exactly true either. Although the kinds of outcomes based tests we use (security of attachment to parents, behavioural problems, self perceptions of cognitive and physical competence, and interest, effort and success in school) show no difference, there are some psychological differences between children of gay parents and children of heterosexual parents. Children of same-sex parents were more likely to suffer from anxiety and fear of discrimination (that is, a false/unrealised fear of persecution) due to perceived stigma [Study 1] [Study 2]. That is, although they perceive their family is normal, they're afraid other people will not and that external pressure manifests in social insecurities. That impacts the happiness of these children, and increases rates of occasional substance abuse (but not heavy substance abuse), but not their well-being or productivity measurements in childhood or in adulthood.

So then what can we conclude? Children of same-sex parents are just as well-developed (not more developed), but less happy/more anxious than children of heterosexual parents. If we take that through to the lower burden, we have to ask the question, is that worse than children who are not adopted at all? The answer should intuitively be, absolutely not. But if you need I can do this again to find evidence of all the harms associated with not having any parents at all.

 

I am joining this thread late so might be going over some of the things already said. I just want to state that gender based parenting doesn't really mean anything to me because I have been a foster parent and an adoptive parent. Heteresexual parents are just as likely to be messed up or to mess up their kids as same-sex couples. In fact, I have never actually had to foster a child from a family with same sex parents, but I have been through hell with the biological kids of hereosexual couples. It isn't about the gender, it is about the commitment to parenting.

IMO the foster system is badly broken but as ZachT pointed out, not having any parents at all is really tough on kids, so we have to work with what we have. If a loving same-sex couple are prepared to foster or adopt a kid or two, then I say all power to them. What kids need is a loving and caring environment where they feel included and wanted. But no matter how hard a foster or adoptive parent tries, when kids come to them broken, sometimes they are so badly damaged that all the love in the world still can't heal them, especially for kids with RAD (reactive attachment disorder). I say let those who want to be parents (and are prepared to undergo the background checks and training that is involved in fostering or adopting) give it a try because every kid deserves a chance at having parents who care. And in many cases, parental gratification has to be delayed when someone takes in someone else's child due to all the damage. Parenting is a pretty selfless act when done right, and gender doesn't matter as much as motivation.

 

This is a far reaching claim, and I am not entirely sure that it is valid, and I don't know that it could be argued without a resort to some subjective premise/s.

Pythagoras and Archimedes where both Scientists who operated essentially without Christianity, and both taught things which we still teach our children. I would argue that the argument of history suggests that science can function quite successfully without Christianity.

On the other hand we find organisations like Westbro Baptist Church who want us to believe that Christianity and function without science. The result appears to be arid, judgmental, and intellectually unsatisfying.

Anselm, sometime Abbott of Bec, and then Archbishop of Canterbury, in his work Cur Deus Homo (Why God Became Man), actually argued that Science and Christianity were both focussed on a search for truth, and is both were followed with integrity they would arrive at the same conclusion. Indeed for a long time Theology was regarded as the Queen of the Sciences.

I think it is the integrity of the pursuit that is an issue. No end of scientific studies into the adverse affects of smoking funded by the tobacco industry found that there were no adverse affects. A large number of studies funded by oil and gas companies have found no harmful affects as a result of Coal Seam Gas mining by the process know as fracking.

The is a philosophical argument that suggests that objectivity is a subjective possibility. Sadly in our age we have seen an abandonment of any commitment to objectivity. Opinion is presented as Factual News Reporting, and when challenged you ultimately end up talking about 'my truth' as if there was no absolute standard of veracity. So Pilate's Question is asked as cynically today as it was when first uttered.

But none of this is an Anglican way, because as Anglicans we argue 'the truth will set you free'. We are not afraid of nor opposed to science, however we do ask for authenticity and integrity, and we commit ourselves to the same standard as we walk in the way of Jesus.

 

Implicit in this statement is an assumption that same-sex couples create a "stable" family environment. "Stable" in what terms, though? Even if the household seems more stable in some respects, it is extremely unstable in spiritual terms. What does the child gain if he is raised in a financially secure, seemingly 'loving' household but raised to believe that gross sin is okay? Chances are high that the same-sex couple rejects God and teaches their child to do the same. Jesus said it would be better for those adults to have drowned with a millstone around their necks than to have led children astray.