Benet Academy, a Catholic prep school, has been in the news lately, because they rescinded a job offer to a coach when they learned she was gay, but then hired her under public pressure.
I wrote several letters to the paper in response.
The Sun-Times editorial (Hold firm, Benet Academy, for LGBTQ rights, October 1) touches on some of the fundamental issues facing our country today.
The issue at hand is whether human rights conflict with each other, how they might conflict, and how we might resolve the conflict.
The free exercise of religion is one of the foundational rights of our country. The Bill of Rights was added to the Constitution to clarify what some of these inalienable rights that God gave to human beings are, and the free exercise of religion was put in the very first Amendment.
But our country has removed God from the public square, our public schools, and the public’s consciousness so that our society now finds higher values than religious ones such that religious ones are now trumped.
Many religions believe that homosexuality is not God’s plan for human beings, and they have a right to teach their adherents what they believe is that plan. Gay people have a right to work. Nobody’s arguing about that
These religions are not teaching that gay people don’t have a right to work, nor are they trying to prevent them from working. They just believe that if they are to teach their values to their students, then everyone who is in a position of teaching should embrace those same values. That’s not too much to ask or expect. And society should respect that and not try to force everybody to conform to the latest enlightened thinking of the day.
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I am not a Roman Catholic, but I feel I need to respond to a letter published in the Times regarding the Catholic Church. (Benet Academy and 21st-century Catholicism, October 4)
Christians are not impressed by the enlightened thinking of the day. We do not believe that everybody who lived before the 21st century was somehow morally and intellectually inferior than people living today.
We believe that this wonderful, magnificent world that we live in was not the result of random and necessary chemical reactions. We do not believe that life, all life, and the human body with all its intricate tiny parts can be explained without an intelligent Being being responsible for it.
We believe that God created human beings in His image, and loving His creation, He gave them the instructions on how to live this life. The owner’s manual, if you will.
We don’t look at opinion polls or read newspapers to decide what to think and believe. Forgive us if we don’t immediately respond to what the public or the media or the elites deem as the enlightened present state of human wisdom. We are not impressed by the latest marches or parades or court rulings. We see truth as eternal and not shaped by public opinions or polls. We believe that the Creator knows best how the creation is supposed to function, and that He revealed this plan to human beings. We do not believe that human beings are left to learn the laws of life by trial and error, but they are informed by the Inventor Himself.
We will never deny any person’s right to work, but please don’t tell us that we should ever hire a person who should be representing our values someone who doesn’t believe in them. You wouldn’t ask that of any other organization.
