In this episode, we talk with Dr. Janet Smith about the challenges of raising a Catholic child who is gay or lesbian, and how to deal with them. Dr. Smith talks about her own experience with her gay son and how she handled the situation.
00:09:56.720This is very difficult because a lot of people, they want to believe the goodness of people.
00:10:02.540They can't imagine that someone they know, particularly someone who is a priest or someone elevated in the community, could possibly do these things.
00:10:25.360You know, you say, well, whether this guy did it to you or not, something happened because you're obviously in a state of trauma or have been.
00:10:33.120And then the the exorcists say the stories just have a pattern and you have to say, can these people really read up on this and memorize the pattern and tell these stories?
00:10:45.700Or you say, no, no, no, this is this is exactly what it is.
00:10:48.660And I have to tell the victims all the time when people don't.
00:10:51.860It's just you said when they don't believe them.
00:11:47.500And that really, you know, the truth that we know intellectually and our own experience should really be, I mean, not that we can't and must question our own experience.
00:13:44.140If you really see a priest praying a lot, all right, the others will just come out with a show.
00:13:49.880They might show up at a pro-life rally or something.
00:13:52.160But if you know him to be a prayerful man, if you know him to go on retreats, all right, if he's citing some of the best spiritual authors, if he's giving homilies, not just on God loves you, but there is sin in this world.
00:14:09.220You need to fight sin, et cetera, et cetera.
00:14:11.440The ones that are more evil, again, they're oily.
00:14:16.180And so they will say the right things, but they're very shallow right things.
00:14:21.540It's the good priests will challenge you and, you know, just say you really need to be fasting.
00:14:41.380But the good priests walk the walk if they're fasting, if they're, if you see them walking up and down saying their rosary, if you, again, not just for show, not where you're going to see them do this, but you know they do this.
00:17:55.080That's like taking your child and just shoving them into the homosexual community because it's saying, I'm not going to get any love at home.
00:18:03.900And a big problem is a lack of self-esteem, loneliness.
00:27:28.780So the need for any lonely person, but a person who has a lot of self-doubt, which is what, again, profound self-doubt about whether they're masculine enough,
00:27:46.340profound self-doubt about whether anybody could really enjoy their company who's not gay or homosexual or experiencing same-sex attraction.
00:27:55.380Someone always chastises me because I don't use that enough.
00:28:00.200And they're probably right about that.
00:28:02.700But it is the, is they simply need family.
00:28:10.680And they need not just men and not just women.
00:28:13.420And, I mean, just as a single woman, I love to be invited to households with families, you know.
00:28:21.200And I'm getting older, so I can't hear, and it's a little bit too loud for me.
00:28:24.860But, really, you park me in a corner, and I'm pretty darn happy just watching the life around me.
00:28:33.060And so you see that people, and most people are happy to have you there because even when I was not so old but, you know, youngish,
00:28:41.980and people would have me over and they just love it because I talk to their kids, you know, like, how's school and how's this and show me your painting.
00:28:47.800And the kids get all sorts of attention that they don't, they can't, getting it from mom and dad is nice, but getting it from someone else is also nice too.
00:28:55.720So to think about that, just think, you know, it's not hard to put one more plate at the table.
00:29:00.220And I haven't seen so-and-so for a while, so why don't I just invite them over?
00:29:03.740Last minute, they'll probably come, you know, a meal with people, you know.
00:29:08.660So I think that's what people need to do is just to reach out to friends that are alone, whether it's they're homosexual or just not married.
00:29:18.720And they, I mean, single people don't like to be only with single people.
00:29:21.800All right, we like married couples, we like children, so.
00:30:27.060One of the things that I thought we talked about before that I thought was so incredible that I'd love you to repeat is just the progression from when kids are young, particularly the boys,
00:30:41.260and they notice patterns that might lead to this doubt about masculinity.
00:33:42.080But these are certainly masculine men do these things.
00:33:45.740So, again, it's where dad has to, instead of going play catch with the boys that like to do that, he needs to color with the boy that likes to color.
00:33:54.300You know, he needs to go in the kitchen with him and bake or cook with him, whatever he likes to do.
00:33:59.760And to show him that, yeah, this is, you don't, you're not less masculine because you want to do these things.
00:34:04.880And I have one friend who said, yeah, he had three brothers who were all into cars, cars and sports, and he was not.
00:35:11.240He did all the things, the gaming, whatever his son liked to do, he did with him.
00:35:15.540And then he brought his son with him to his workplace and introduced him to people and included him in the things that he would do to show that I'm not ashamed of my son.
00:35:26.200And he does things with me because he's my son.
00:35:29.340And she said, after a couple of years, the two of them, the room would light, you know, one would walk in the room, the other one would total light up, dad's home or my son's home.
00:35:38.460And he said, no sign of effemacy after that.
00:35:41.060And then you do start to say things to them.
00:35:42.720And you do have to do this kind of thing.
00:35:51.280Because one of the big problems with homosexuality is that these boys do feel different, different interests, different lists, maybe a different, a slight body build, whatever.
00:36:01.660And they think no girls will be interested in them.
00:37:43.320Or they've been sexually involved with men who just boys, young men, who just trash them.
00:37:50.060They have sex with them, and they're gone.
00:37:52.080And so they think, well, men are just use you.
00:37:54.900All right, so, I mean, that whole notion about date nights with your daughter, you know, and father-daughter dances and this sort of thing is that I'm going to show her how a good man treats a woman.
00:38:06.460And I'm going to get her used to this behavior.
00:38:09.660This is, if a guy is not treating you like I am with the respect and et cetera, interest in you, not just, you know, touching you, but listening to you and being with you, that's a precious thing for me.
00:38:23.880It's going to be precious for some other man.
00:38:25.500Again, they can feel like they're trash.
00:38:59.520So I'm going to identify more with my dad.
00:39:03.120And so I sort of need a wife like my dad needed a wife.
00:39:06.320And so, you know, instead of saying, you know, again, some women are stay-at-home mothers and very happily so and very competent and all of this stuff.
00:39:15.400And other women do more things than that because that's how they're wired.
00:39:20.500And so to let women know that you can't, it's not only the, and I am all for stay-at-home mothers.
00:39:28.200And I think most women should be stay-at-home mothers.
00:39:31.080But there's a great book by Edith Stein on, maybe it's just something about women.
00:39:38.360Anyway, she identifies like four or five different kinds of women.
00:39:53.160Because, I mean, she's just a fluff head.
00:39:55.480And some of them can become very, when I was at the University of Dallas and I had students come in, a young woman, and I was her faculty advisor.
00:40:03.780I said, oh, my gosh, this girl is just such a little fluff head.
00:40:05.860And I'm sitting there saying, why is she here?
00:40:09.200I just can't imagine that this, why did this girl come here?
00:40:13.660She seems like a total sorority type, et cetera.
00:40:16.580Well, another year and a half later, she was a totally different person.
00:40:20.480She had gotten a really good education.
00:40:23.780She enjoyed discussing ideas, et cetera.
00:40:25.780So it's not that a total fluff head, maybe I misjudged her to start with, of course, but that was my impression.
00:40:31.920So the total fluff head can become something other than that, but you've got to work on it.
00:40:37.320And then there's the woman who's just, again, I mean, I know some of these women, a lot of them are academics or businesswomen, you know, extremely capable.
00:42:06.560Is there such a thing for girls as well?
00:42:08.060I don't know as much, but this is what I would guess from some things.
00:42:12.340I mean, I think both men and women, husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, they need to be so complimentary to each other and about each other with their children.
00:42:24.580The father has to keep saying, what a wonderful wife I married and what she does for us.
00:42:56.840And I remember one big achievement when I was, I think it was in eighth grade, my father loved banana cream pie with big meringue all over it.
00:43:08.100This was like, this was one of the high moments of my life.
00:43:11.380You know, I made a pie that my dad loved.
00:43:13.420So this whole idea that, again, we honor your father and you speak well of your husband and you speak well of other men and you speak badly of bad men.
00:43:24.840You know, you say, okay, yeah, that guy, yeah, I know he's handsome and he's dashing and he's this.
00:43:29.200But I hate to tell you what he does, you know, and you say, I hope he changes.
00:44:01.860And so you build their view of reality.
00:44:05.680Because if you're always trashing men, if you're always saying men are irresponsible, men are this, men are that, it's like, why would she be interested?
00:46:11.480I was once told and employed this, actually, because it was very successful.
00:46:17.560I think I read or something that if your kids are going after their mom, you know, and really saying something disrespectful, to forcefully say, I mean, not in a mean, nasty way, but to forcefully say, don't you dare talk to my wife like this.
00:46:39.880I thought that was stunning because it separates the relationship from the kids for a second to make them go, oh, there's a superior relationship here.
00:46:50.120Husband to wife, which is not, that's where we come from, but it's not us yet.
00:46:55.520And it really stunned the kids, and psychologically it made total sense that it would because that, but I did that a number of times when it was warranted, and it really, it's striking for kids.
00:47:09.540It's magic, and you're absolutely right.
00:47:11.560It just says, we're a unit, and we're together, and don't fool around here.
00:47:20.200In terms of healing from this predicament that many people find themselves in now, in terms of getting over homosexuality, or if you want to say getting over, dealing with it in a way that you can live as a Catholic, that you can live in the state of grace, what's your best advice for that?
00:47:44.800Well, I'm very blessed, honestly, in that I'm fairly close to four or five men that have gone through this struggle.
00:47:58.320And I'm pretty convinced that two things, several things on regard to this.
00:48:03.220But one is certainly that most men, if you could wave a magic wand for homosexual and say they're going to be fully heterosexual tomorrow, they'd say, please do it.
00:48:22.060It's not that they got up in the morning and said, again, I could be heterosexual, I could be homosexual.
00:48:26.880It's much more that, as I mentioned, that process of feeling different, of feeling that I'm not masculine enough, feeling and then something happens, whether it's predation or whether it's homosexual porn, whether it's just fooling around with another guy.
00:48:43.440Something triggers something in your system where all of a sudden you sexualize this attraction to masculinity that you're finding in these other places and you don't find in yourself.
00:49:06.380And then there's a whole way in which women are, for some reason, they're not in their world, all right, except maybe a sympathetic listener, but not as someone who is a sexual attraction.
00:49:19.940Okay. So, and then many of them, again, they sort of get into this not knowing how to get out of it.
00:49:29.420And so they sort of get more and more dragged into it.
00:50:32.900He said, I was more sensitive than others.
00:50:34.800He said, I really like to talk about deep issues.
00:50:38.300And my guy friends mostly just wanted to walk in cars and sports.
00:50:42.520He said, so I ended up talking to women a lot as though I was part of their company, all right, because they wanted to talk about the things I wanted to talk about.
00:51:21.900And then I decided to show it to my youth director at my church.
00:51:26.700And he said, he read it, and he said, this is not who you are.
00:51:38.580And so the youth director took him to the pastor of the church.
00:51:43.800He said, you know, we don't really know what to do about this, but you're one of us, and we're going to help you with this.
00:51:49.040So he had a—and one thing is, another thing that's almost universally true, is that men with same-sex attraction think God hates them, all right, because God would never have let them—if he loved them, he never would have let them become gay.
00:52:23.020I mean, I eat too much, and every time I eat too much or spend too much time on Twitter, I think, why do I do these things that I don't want to do, all right?
00:52:32.040So that's how—they're very negative in their internal speech, you know, and they're trying to be gay and happy, and, you know, but inside there's some really unpleasant self-talk going on.
00:52:46.720And so this young man was assigned a masculine older man who would have breakfast with him every Saturday morning for a very long time and talk to him about God and talk to him about how God loved him in spite of all this.
00:53:00.340And, you know, biblical stories of people who did wrong things, and God forgave them and loved them and all of this.
00:53:05.340And so he started being able to resist his temptations more and felt more comfortable going to church groups.
00:53:15.760And at a certain point—I mean, there were some falls in between all sorts of stories, but there was some woman that he just thought was so attractive, young woman.
00:53:33.240And before long, he fell in love and she fell in love.
00:53:37.340And she knew about his past, and she understood and forgave him.
00:53:41.340And that's—not that many men can become heterosexual who have been in a homosexual lifestyle.
00:53:49.120But, first of all, they have to go through some healing about, you know, not about their sexuality, but, again, their gender.
00:53:57.120They're—I'm masculine, and God does love me, and I'm worth something.
00:54:01.940And he said, I was prepared to try to live a life of just celibate chastity.
00:54:08.640But some of these men can fall in love.
00:54:11.160They don't fall in love with—like, most men are attracted to a lot of women and even almost find every woman a little bit attractive because they like the feminine.
00:56:11.400This is not something that the average person—most everybody struggles with wanting to eat too much, sleep too much, spend too much, etc.
00:56:20.660A small percentage struggle with homosexual desires.
00:56:25.000Because something has to happen to you.
00:56:26.920It's not something that comes naturally.
00:56:29.040It's something that—it's like a Doberman has come into your system, and you're trying to control this out-of-control Doberman, some monsters in your system.
00:56:37.460You're not designed, honestly, to control that.
00:56:54.420And so every—and I've asked all the homosexual men I know, do you know of anybody that's been able to live a chaste life without making a radical commitment to Jesus?
00:58:54.220Don't let me buy anything I don't need, you know?
00:58:58.180It's—it's a small temptation, but it's real.
00:59:00.580I come up with all this stuff, then what the heck did I buy this for?
00:59:03.760Okay, so that relying upon Jesus minute by minute, all right?
00:59:09.200And minute by minute, and we all should.
00:59:11.660And that's—there's a strange gift to homosexuality because they can't manage to stay away from mortal sin without this daily reliance upon the Lord.