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From Under The Rubble
July 23, 2013
The Charitable Burden Of Truth
by Christopher Manion
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FRONT ROYAL, VA — "The best way of treating people with dignity is to tell them the truth."
Now there's a revolutionary idea.
In fact, it's a Catholic idea, and these days, in a world where reality has been turned upside down, the Catholic devotion to truth — to the Way, the Truth, and the Life — might well be revolutionary.
It's heartening that this common-sense observation comes from Rev. Wojciech Giertych, who has served as the Papal Theologian since being appointed by Pope Benedict XVI in 2005. In a popular culture awash in faux invocations of "love," "equality," and "dignity" — symbols purloined and perverted to camouflage crimes against nature and nature's God — Father Giertych's welcome candor is a refreshing ray of hope.
Slowly the public perception of homosexuals changed: those who had been dangerous and promiscuous purveyors of the "Gay Plague" became blameless innocents who had tragically fallen victim to a deadly disease.
"Homosexuality is against human nature," Fr. Giertych tells the indispensable Lifesitenews. What the Church needs, he says, is to "pastorally help such people to return to an emotional and moral integrity."
Not to mention physical health. Consider: when Father Enrique Rueda wrote The Homosexual Network over thirty years ago, the fact that "alternative lifestyles" had spread serious disease that threatened an untimely death was already widely known.
The disease was known; the network was not — until Father Rueda described the grim, obsessive movement that would eventually come to dominate not only the culture, but language itself.
That movement focused on reframing the issue. Slowly the public perception of homosexuals changed: those who had been dangerous and promiscuous purveyors of the "Gay Plague" became blameless innocents who had tragically fallen victim to a deadly disease. Thus absolved, they demanded their "rights," which had for centuries been denied by society's history of oppression and prejudice. Turning their backs on Divine Law, they sought political salvation.
"Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad," Euripides observed. In the 19th century, Donoso Cortes stated the Catholic viewpoint: Satan is never satisfied merely to see the sinner coast downhill; he must be constantly pushed to deeper and darker deeds.
Dependably, the Prince of This World wields the glowing trident, and prods.
Chasing The Bug — And Passing The Buck
Be warned, this story is not pretty.
In the early 1980s, Father Rueda introduced to me the term "homophobia," a neologism created by homosexuals to indict not those who practiced "the sin against nature" and spread its companion diseases, but those who criticized them for doing so.
The Supreme Court's recent DOMA opinions have received widespread scrutiny. Of particular interest here is Justice Kennedy's apparent embrace of the "homophobia" narrative, implying that defenders of marriage actually intend to "demean" and "humiliate" homosexuals.
...on inspection, it's not Catholics who wish to harm homosexuals, but, all too often, activists within the homosexual movement itself.
On the contrary: Father Giertych urges Catholics to "pastorally help such people to return to an emotional and moral integrity."
Hardly "demeaning." In fact, on inspection, it's not Catholics who wish to harm homosexuals, but, all too often, activists within the homosexual movement itself.
The Rubble has come across a troubling trend which reveals that homosexuals themselves might be their own worst enemies. Father Giertych is right — they deserve the truth — but truth is not what they're after.
What they're after is disease, and death.
Earlier this month, the London Daily Mirror reported on "a new craze in which men are secretly seeking and spreading HIV. The reckless practice, known as 'bug-chasing,' started in the U.S. as a bizarre means of getting a sexual high from risk-taking."
The thought boggles the mind. Homosexuals actually trying to spread HIV? Even trying to become infected?
Yes, says the Mirror, having interviewed several of the men involved. "Many then meet up and try to transmit the potentially life-threatening virus, which attacks the immune system weakening the body's ability to fight disease."
The Mirror interviewed one practitioner, "Nick." Since Nick is HIV-positive, he is known in bug-chasing as a "gift-giver."
"I don't regret the sex I had or becoming HIV" he says. "The only downside of contracting the virus is it took some of the excitement away."
Since his diagnosis, Nick claims to have tried to infect some 20 men.
"I just think that as it's between two consenting adults, it's no one else's business," Nick says. (Speaking of "business," Nick gets his drugs free from England's taxpayer-funded nationalized health service).
The trend is actually not new. The phenomenon has been substantiated and investigated in academic research journals. And ten years ago, Rolling Stone magazine interviewed "Carlos," another bug-chaser. Carlos got right down to the point: "His eyes light up as he says that the actual moment of transmission, the instant he gets HIV, will be 'the most erotic thing I can imagine.… I know what the risks are, and I know that putting myself in this situation is like putting a gun to my head…. But I think it turns the other guy on to know that I'm negative and that they're bringing me into the brotherhood." Carlos goes on to explain in rather graphic terms that he finds the experience gratifying.
The Stone continues: "Carlos is part of an intricate underground world that has sprouted, driven almost completely by the Internet, in which men who want to be infected with HIV get together with those who are willing to infect them. The men who want the virus are called 'bug chasers,' and the men who freely give the virus to them are called 'gift givers.' While the rest of the world fights the AIDS epidemic and most people fear HIV infection, this subculture celebrates the virus and eroticizes it."
In denying the Sacrament of Marriage, these men have launched a substitute religion of their own, hijacking, then corrupting, Christian concepts of community, sharing, and generosity. There's no Decalogue — "homophobia" is the only sin. And there is even salvation: Once the bug-chaser acquires the devastating disease, he is forever free, liberated from the haunting fear of acquiring it.
The Most Loving Philanthropists of All
"First we found our pride," a popular homosexual website rejoices. No fans of Augustine need apply, because pride is the motivating force of this new-found faith. It "gives us a deep and profound sense of purpose in the world … which makes being homosexual essential to the balance of Nature.
"With the natural world on the brink of demise largely because of overpopulation, unrestrained homosexuality… offers perhaps the most natural option to be enjoined."
There you have it. Homosexuals have every right to be proud: they are the saviors of the world.
Pierre Proudhon observed long ago that political questions eventually become theological questions. In the sordid, misery-laden story the Rubble has recounted here, we see how denial of religious truth inevitably decays into the husk of a faux religion, trimmed out to fulfill the inchoate but innate religious desire in every human being.
homosexuals themselves might be their own worst enemies. ...they deserve the truth — but truth is not what they're after.
"Ya gotta serve somebody," sang Bob Dylan, late in life — even if that someone is nothing more than an idol of self-gratification. AIDS is magically transformed from a curse to the Cross that makes men free, and homosexuality becomes the faith that saves mankind from sin (environmental, of course) and certain death.
The dismal, hollow incantations of gift, love, and humanity that flow rather freely in homosexual lore come from a ship that has drifted desperately far from the shore. It is sinking in despair and pain.
What is to be done?
It is a great challenge to the Church and to us all to respond to our Christian duty to "pastorally help such people to return to an emotional and moral integrity." But that's what we are called to do.
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From Under the Rubble is copyright © 2013 by Christopher Manion. All rights reserved.
Christopher Manion is Director of the Campaign for Humanae Vitae™, a project of the Bellarmine Forum. He served as a staff director on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for many years. He has taught in the departments of politics, religion, and international relations at Boston University, the Catholic University of America, and Christendom College. This column is sponsored by the Bellarmine Forum.
See a complete biographical sketch.
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