Before he became the Holy Father, Pope Francis spoke his mind about many of the most sensitive topics the Roman Catholic church faces today. Here is an excerpt from On Heaven and Earth, published in 2012, and his authorized biography The Jesuit, published in 2010 and republished last month as Pope Francis: Conversations with Jorge Mario Bergoglio: “Gay marriage is an anthropological step backward. If there's a private union, then third parties and society aren't affected. But if they're granted marriage rights and can adopt, there could be children affected. Every person needs a masculine father and a feminine mother to help them settle their identity.”
Here, the Holy Father quickly cuts the core of both the major defect in the gay marriage rational, and to the cause of homosexuality itself: sexual identity. For in this brief line, “...to help them settle their identity,” Francis points directly to that which inevitably hurts a child who may later develop same-sex attraction; a miss-identification with one parent, or the absence of, or neglect, from another. Without the harmonious duality between the sexes, within the home, either caused by the deliberate embrace of alternative lifestyles, children born out of wed-lock, or the chaos caused by divorce, the danger of homosexuality developing is always present. From my own experiences in the gay lifestyle: most of my male friends either lacked a reliable male role model as children, were overpowered by feminine personalities within the family, survived childhood abuse, lacked a source of parental compassion, or, as was the case with most of the lesbians I knew, never received love from the parent of the same sex. This wound would carry into adolescence and then adulthood. Then, those that suffer from this lose, search for anyone on Earth who may heal it. But, it never goes away. Only by mending the family unit, can future children be saved from the endless struggle of homosexuality. Thank you Holy Father for making an issue that has become complex, simple again.