In “Romeo and Juliet,” desperate and alone, Juliet runs to Friar Laurence and wails: “O shut the door! and when thou hast done so, Come weep with me; past hope, past cure, past help!” Like Juliet, in times of great desperation and trail, many will oftentimes turn to the Church for solace and reprieve. For those who have forgotten, abandoned, or turned their backs on God, a moment of crisis can often prove the means by which Our Lord will once again touch the hearts of the confused and the off course. From experience, when my heart was hardened, I was like Pharaoh - seeing the world I had created fall in front of my eyes; yet, I still could not believe. It took the nearness of death for me to realize that something needed to change. For, somehow, the cold reality of damnation instantly brings back focus and what was once completely delusional becomes clearly evil.
For those trapped within the homosexual lifestyle, the false dream of gay contentment is oftentimes a nightmare that few can wake from. This being the case because those around the gay individual are frequent facilitators - through a twisted sense of charity and tolerance, they accept and affirm; this is very much the case with mother’s of gay males: holding tight their little boys to their breasts; causing a self-centered form of stunted masculinity that prevents a true development towards independent manhood. I found this even to be the case with men whose lives were truly out-of-control; young men dying of AIDS -with the their mothers taking on the role of the Pieta; creating a martyr out of a wasted and ultimately perverse existence; tragically, its how they deal with the guilt, forever protecting them from hurt - even to the grave.
Then, how does one treat the gay person in crisis? Or, even the semi-complacent? This again reminds me of a favorite line from classical literature. In Dickens’ “The Christmas Carol,” after hearing that his ugly selfish ways are leading him straight to hell, Scrooge begs the bearer of this dire warning, his old friend Jacob Marley: “Speak comfort to me, Jacob.” But, the truth is all Jacob has time to offer. Despite his wretchedness, Scrooge doesn’t want the truth, but the soothing calm of a lie. For the most part, that’s what homosexuals get from their families and from their heterosexual friends. Those who have a Christian inkling, tend to stand back and present themselves as aloof, but non-judgmental. Only, the moment is precious, and where those involved in the gay lifestyle are concerned, like Scrooge, they are recklessly tottering on the edge of eternity. Clearly, in this desperate era - the occasion for diplomacy and timidity masked as misplaced open-mindedness has passed; one must speak plainly - to do otherwise, is supremely un-Christian; did Our Lord not say: “Sanctify them in truth. Thy word is truth...And for them do I sanctify myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth.” (John 17: 17-9)