(Fr. Michael P. Orsi) — If you’ve taken comfort in the notion that today’s gender movement is just a bunch of harmless, confused people struggling with their personal conflicts and longing to express their true sexual identities, this year’s Pride Month surely has challenged all your assumptions.
The parade that capped off June’s Pride events in New York City proclaimed the movement’s actual intentions quite clearly. The message was chanted all along the route, repeatedly and at high volume:
“We’re here, we’re queer, we’re coming for your children.”
Now, there’s a sentiment that should make your blood run cold. It gives the lie to all those innocent protestations you’ve heard for years: “Gee, all we want is to live our lives and love who we love.”
It’s well past time to wake up and recognize the truth. We are living in a very dangerous time filled with threats to our physical and mental health, and to our immortal souls.
The pedophilic words chanted by a corps of New York drag queens were as vivid a wake-up call as can be imagined. This was perversion on proud display. It was an assault on childhood innocence, on family life, on decency, on religion, on basic human reality. It was as vivid and unignorable as a declaration of war.
You might call it our “Gender Pearl Harbor.”
The time for kindness and tolerance has passed. These people must be opposed on every level in every way.
The problem, of course, is that the gender movement has secured alliances among the leadership of government, business, finance, media, the arts — virtually every institution of society. The country has been severely compromised by this pervasive and insidious gender ideology.
WATCH: ‘Sound of Freedom’ movie EXPOSES child trafficking | Tim Ballard EXCLUSIVE
Perhaps most thoroughly compromised is the school system. Public elementary and secondary education has been remade by at least two generations of politicized teachers, trained in colleges and universities that are imbued with progressive thinking, and committed to indoctrinating schoolchildren to become agents of social change.
Not only are public schools ideologically distorted, they are the places where profound influence is exerted on kids for up to eight hours a day, five days a week (plus time spent in extracurricular activities).
It’s true that there are fine and dedicated public school teachers. But alongside them are all too many who actively encourage students to explore gender alternatives, who insist on “preferred pronouns,” who even provide opposite-sex clothes for kids to wear during school hours.
Administrators have often hidden such cynical machinations from parents. School boards have resisted public questioning of their districts’ gender policies.
For all that, however, education is the one area in which mothers and fathers can exercise effective resistance. They have the ultimate option of removing their children from public schools. Especially Catholic parents.
We still have at least the remnants of a school network that once produced millions of balanced, moral, faithful young people — that made it possible for immigrants from around the world to assimilate into American society (many starting out with minimal language skills).
Yes, our system of parochial education is a shadow of what it once was. There was a wave of Catholic school closings back in the 1960s and ’70s, when declines in religious vocations made nuns and teacher-priests scarce, and parishes had to pay lay instructors the going wage.
READ: Support flagging? Bans on ‘Pride’ flags signal strong opposition to forced LGBT propaganda
Demographic changes also came into play. Catholic families were leaving the great urban ethnic enclaves. They moved to the suburbs, where rapidly growing school districts offered shiny new buildings, and it seemed like sending the kids to public school was the route to full social acceptance and success.
Parochial education declined accordingly, and the effect has been felt keenly in the Faith. Mass attendance has fallen from 78 percent of Catholics in the early ’60s to 30 percent today. In some areas it’s even less, and society at large is suffering, as a consequence.
Today conditions in Catholic schools vary widely. Many of the remaining facilities are struggling. At the same time, some are bursting at the seams with refugees from corrupt public schools.
Nevertheless, the basic template is still there. Catholics know how to create educational alternatives. We’ve done it before. Some are doing it now.
New Catholic schools are being formed around the country. Catholic educational consulting companies have developed curricula and instructional materials — in some cases complete turnkey systems — for use in these new schools, and even to help parents who’ve chosen homeschooling over public instruction.
School-choice financing systems are gaining ground. In several states, such as my own state of Florida, public education funds can be used to cover private-school tuition and related expenses.
This is all very encouraging. But we need more. Much more.
The devil wants us to give up. He wants us to watch the moral disaster unfolding around us in our country, and to assume that decline is inevitable.
And he’s meeting with a good deal of success. Many people have concluded that there’s nothing to be done about the great wave of perversion that’s come upon us. Unfortunately, even some churches have drawn that conclusion. Disputes over how to address gender conflict are tearing many congregations apart, in some cases whole denominations.
This spring, as I watched our First Communion class, I was struck by the sight of those innocent and vulnerable children receiving Our Lord for the first time. I was charmed.
But then I was disturbed by the thought that those first communicants whose education is in public schools are unlikely to ever hear anything that helps them grow in their faith. On the contrary, they may very well encounter the evil that was on display in that notorious Pride parade.
And those terrible words rang in my ears:
“We’re here, we’re queer, we’re coming for your children.”
This essay is based on a homily delivered by Fr. Orsi (above). Published with permission.
A priest of the Diocese of Camden, New Jersey, Rev. Michael P. Orsi currently serves as parochial vicar at St. Agnes Parish in Naples, Florida. He is host of “Action for Life TV,” a weekly cable television series devoted to pro-life issues, and his writings appear in numerous publications and online journals. His TV show episodes can be viewed online here.