In addition to his usual bad takes, the Catholic League’s Bill Donohue hates LGBT people. His Jan. 13 CNSNews.com column touted a “report” he put out — actually, just a list of right-wing bullet points unsupported by evidence — purporting to show a “future agenda” attacking “parental rights.” One alleged example was that “Biden’s CDC was encouraging LGBT youth to engage with Q Chat Space. This online chat space, where youth can discuss sex, polyamorous relationships, the occult, sex change operation, and activism, is designed with a ‘quick escape’ feature so it can easily be hidden from parents.” Yes, he’s equating being LGBT to “the occult.”
Donohue spent his Jan. 17 column attacking gay marriage in general and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s marriage in particular:
Does Buttigieg really have a husband? Of course not. He may love Chasten but he can never be his husband. Why not? Because he has been disqualified by nature.
It is true that Buttigieg is legally married, but that is a legal fiction. The Britannica Encyclopedia defines a legal fiction as “a rule assuming as true something that is clearly false.” The idea that a man can have a husband is clearly false—he can only have a wife—despite claims to the contrary.
Buttigieg’s “marriage” is recognized by the positive law, or by what lawmakers and judges posit, but it is not recognized by the natural law. The natural law, which was first promulgated by Aristotle and Cicero (and later amended by Aquinas), holds that morality is a function of human nature, and that we can arrive at moral strictures on the basis of observation and reason.
[…]No man can have a husband anymore than a man can bear a child. He can say he does but that doesn’t make it true. If someone introduced his uncle to a stranger, saying, this is my aunt Joe, no one would believe him. Those who have blue eyes can claim they have brown eyes, but that doesn’t change reality. A left-handed person can claim to be right-handed, but observation tells us otherwise. Gorillas do not give birth to kangaroos.
Nature can be stubborn. It is not a social construct. It is fixed. The sooner we learn this truth, the better off our society will be.
So what should we call Chasten, if he is not Buttigieg’s husband? His partner. The two of them may not like it, but truth is not determined by what is popular. It is determined by what makes sense according to nature and nature’s God.
Donohue has long falsely blamed homosexuals for the Catholic Church’s child sex scandal even though investigators in a study commissioned by the church found no link between sexual identity and sexual abuse.