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Feb. 5, 2018 - The Michael Knowles Show
53:22
Ep. 99 - Should We Accept Gay Marriage? ft. Fr. Michael Schmitz

Fr. Michael Schmitz, YouTuber and author of "Made For Love: Same-Sex Attraction and the Catholic Church" joins Michael to discuss: should conservatives embrace gay marriage? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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There's a lot going on in the news, and we are not going to talk about any of it.
We're going to talk about a more important question.
Should conservatives accept and embrace gay marriage?
Do conservatives need to embrace gay marriage to survive?
We will speak to YouTube star and the author.
We will discuss what has become one of the central preoccupations of our age, even though it only affects a relatively small number of Americans.
We will discuss a whole range of subjects with regard to sexual morality and the question of same-sex marriage, and decide once and for all what the GOP and conservatives should do.
I am Michael Knowles and this is the Michael Knowles Show.
In 2001, Americans opposed monogamous same-sex unions, opposed including those in the definition of marriage by a margin of 57% opposed including those in the definition of marriage by a margin of By 2017, those numbers had more than flipped to 62% supporting same-sex marriage and 32% opposing it.
56% of baby boomers support same-sex marriage.
I think around 150 million percent of millennials support it.
Even 41% of the greatest generation, the silent generation, support same-sex marriage.
The leading demographic supporting same-sex marriage are the religiously unaffiliated, the so-called nuns, who support same-sex marriage at a rate of a shocking 85%.
Two-thirds of mainline Protestants now support same-sex marriage, but those guys will believe anything.
You know, they're wrong on a number of things.
Mainline Protestantism is basically just a country club, I think, at this point.
Leading the opposition to same-sex marriage are white evangelical Protestants, With only 35% of them approving it, though that number did rise 8 percentage points from 27% in just one year.
Incredibly, two-thirds of Catholics whose pontiff calls gay marriage, quote, a machination of the father of lies who seeks to deceive and confuse the children of God, support same-sex marriage.
73% of Democrats and 70% of Independents support it, while even 40% of Republicans support same-sex marriage, nearly doubling over the past decade.
In 2001, one-third of both blacks and whites supported same-sex marriage.
Today, two-thirds of whites and half of black Americans support it.
Women are more likely than men to support same-sex marriage, though both the numbers, they're high for both.
64% for women and 60% for men.
Sweet little Elisa is indicative of this gender divide.
She has been encouraging me to get a gay marriage for years so that she can finally get away and be free.
Understandable.
How do we explain this marriage shift on the question of same-sex marriage?
To help us answer that, we are joined by Father Michael Schmitz.
And before we get to Father Schmitz, who has a wonderful new book out and a lot to say, I have got to talk to you about a very important thing that keeps our lights on.
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Okay.
We're joined by Father Michael Schmitz.
Father Schmitz, thank you so much for being here.
Thanks, Michael.
I, right off the bat, I have to apologize that I do not have my Hot or Cold Lestis Tears mug.
I just have a DC Comics, I'm sorry.
Right out of the gate, I... I'm sorry for you.
It's okay.
Obviously, you can probably enjoy them in just about any vessel.
They are always delicious.
But this is the only one that's FDA approved to maintain those leftist tears, hot or cold, always salty and delicious.
So we'll have to get one out to you right now, just to protect your health, protect the rectory from the fallout.
Absolutely.
Right.
You don't want them to go bad.
That's right.
Oh, they never go bad.
They stay great forever and ever.
So, for those of you who don't know Father Schmitz, he has a great YouTube channel.
I think it is fair to say, Father Schmitz, you are the most prominent YouTube star among the Catholic clergy.
You're at least up there.
I don't know.
Bishop Barron is pretty big.
Bishop Barron is big.
Father Rutler has some great videos online.
But Father Schmidt's channel, Ascension Presents, has been viewed by over 11 million viewers.
He has a new book out from Ignatius, Made for Love, Same-Sex Attraction, and The Catholic Church.
So, Father Schmidt's, to begin, there are examples, we are always told, In classical antiquity of same-sex unions and even unions that resemble marriage, the Roman emperor Nero apparently sort of married a young boy, Sporus, after the death of his first two wives.
He made his boy bride dress up like a lady at public events, so Wikipedia tells me.
Now, of course, Nero did it is not exactly an endorsement.
Right, he also married a horse.
Yeah, right.
There's that.
Yeah, there were a lot of strange activities that were going on, not exactly a guidepost.
For the history of the Christian West, marriage has had a clear meaning, the union of man and woman.
This has been a consensus in the West for millennia.
And now we think it's the opposite.
Now that public opinion has switched so quickly, what has caused it to flip within just a few years?
Well, I think there's a number of factors.
You don't even have to, I don't think you even have to appeal to any kind of religious idea.
I think you just, once we disconnect from a real sense of, I guess, rationality, once we disconnect from reason, and once we actually, I think in some ways, embrace a scientific, not scientific, scientific is great, a scientific worldview where we can just, where the world is endlessly manipulative, or manipulative-able, that we can basically redefine everything.
It basically comes from a thing you might call nominalism, where if you name a thing that thing, then it just becomes that thing.
But there's no such thing as a true nature of a thing, right?
Now I just used the word thing a thousand times in the last two sentences, but I always ask people, okay, if you want to redefine marriage, first, just define it.
And blank.
Blank, blank faces.
Blank stares back.
Because it's like, well, it's when you really love someone.
Well, okay, that's a good question.
Or that's a good point.
I really love my brother.
I love my sister.
Is that marriage?
Like, no, no, no.
It's when you love someone and you're committed to them.
Like, okay, well, what if I love my nephew and I'm really committed to him?
I just want to see him do well.
He's my godson.
I want to see him do well.
Is that the same thing?
No, it's when you love someone, you're committed to each other, and you really help each other flourish.
Well, right up the road from here, there's a convent of nuns, and they love each other, they're committed, and they help each other flourish.
It's that marriage.
So, like, I think before we even...
I mean, it's basically anti-reason to try to redefine something that you don't know the definition I know that is such a good point.
I noticed that they do this and I think that it is a real strategy of the left.
I think it's well thought out because I actually see Donald Trump using it very effectively on other issues.
Donald Trump says, we are going to build the wall and Mexico is going to pay for it.
And so we all start arguing about who's going to pay for the wall.
Is it going to be Mexico?
Is it going to be the taxpayers?
And he's gotten us to slide right past his premise, which is the actually contentious question, are we going to build the wall?
It's the same thing with marriage.
The left seems to have blown right past the debate over what marriage is and the definition of it into who has the right to get married.
So now we're arguing over civil rights.
And of course, if it's a question of civil rights, everybody is going to get that right.
But that first question is, what is marriage?
And the left is insisting now that it is monogamous same-sex unions, but for some reason not polygamous same-sex unions.
Those have been excluded from the new definition of marriage.
So on the question of what is marriage, why is it so important that marriage be the union of man and woman?
Yeah, I think that from the foundation of civilization...
You recognize that the essential building block of any community, I mean, from the smallest tribe to the largest nation, the building block, the essential building block, is marriage and family.
Why?
Because we have a lot of organizations, right?
We have a lot of people who are loosely committed to each other, but in no other relationship do offspring happen.
And so that sense of like, so there's no propagation of the species, for human beings at least, Outside of this particular kind of relationship, yeah, you can maybe farm it out to the state, you could give it to the, you know, the whole village to raise the child, but the village doesn't create the child, and the village doesn't provide a stable environment for that child.
The only reason why the state cares about marriage in the first place, like why we have tax benefits, why we have some perks for those who are married, is because we say, okay, it's not because we believe in love so much.
That we just want to support you kids and make it, want you to, you know, make it in this crazy world.
It's because you two kids are going to probably have some more kids.
We want to make sure that those children are taken care of.
And so why is it so important?
Because we're messing with the, we're really messing in a way that we've never experienced before, I think as a species, with this undefinition.
I wouldn't even say it's a redefinition of marriage.
It's an undefinition of the most essential building block of A society.
And so then you think about this.
What happens if you try to build with materials that have never been tested before?
You wouldn't.
You wouldn't build any structure that was solid.
You wouldn't build any structure that you could rely on because you don't even know if the materials are going to work.
And I think this is a really dangerous experiment that we're And they say, so often, I find this to be the case on essential first principles, sort of political issues.
I think that I understand the left's point of view, but I don't think that they understand our point of view.
And very frequently, they say, they mock people on the right or the religious right, and they say, They say that we say, you know, it was Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve, and they refer to Genesis as some children's fable that has no meaning.
Meanwhile, Genesis is perhaps the most profound text ever composed by human hands.
Now what they say is that if children are this central aspect, the ability...
The potential to create children, which is not to say that a couple who is infertile, a woman who has difficulty conceiving or whatever, doesn't mean to exclude them from it, but excluding even the possibility, the logical possibility, We now have, for instance, single parents who are able to adopt.
So in that case, the question of children seems to be a little tangential.
We know that gay people, people with same-sex attraction, can adopt as though they are single.
So now, if they are in a same-sex union, certainly they could continue to adopt.
They say, well, marriage has been so undefined already.
They say, for instance, that divorce has skyrocketed in modern years, although the rate has actually come down recently.
How do you respond to people who say marriage has already been undefined?
Who cares if we add a little bit more to that?
Right.
Well, I think that it's kind of like a...
Well, I guess the Titanic is already sinking.
And so we might as well just, you know, play our instruments and go down with the ship.
Right.
Shoot some holes in the side of it.
Exactly.
I mean, look, the iceberg did that.
Why don't I just, you know, jump overboard and it's right into the ocean.
I would say that I think there's something worth salvaging.
And I would not deny the fact that...
Like, heterosexual marriages falling apart or people, you know, kind of having no-fault divorce.
You know, when that was proposed, we probably, as people who care about our country, people who care about our culture, we probably should have been a little bit more wary and a little bit more cautious in moving forward with that.
And because now we see the fallout.
We see how this really has affected children being raised I mean, even though children can say, I love both of my parents and them getting divorced, that's good that they love them still, but they've been affected by this.
And so to say, like, we should have been stronger, why not now say, let's get stronger rather than let's just keep being weak.
So I think, yes, there's a sense of, like, let's define this rather than undefine it, and let's actually help marriages become better, not just say you can't have this to, you know, A gay couple, a lesbian couple.
I think it's really important.
And I don't see it.
With people who are in my generation, I don't think that they have the in for a penny, in for a pound attitude.
I notice that all of my friends, everyone in our generation, our parents were divorced.
It just happened to our parents' generation.
And I notice now people are much more careful about marriage.
And they seem to be...
Obviously, the plural of anecdote isn't data.
But we do know the trends are declining, the divorce rates.
And just talking to friends of mine, regardless of their political views...
They'll say, yeah, I really don't want to get divorced.
I'm really trying not to get divorced.
I think that wasn't a good experience and I don't want to do it myself.
I'd like to ask you a bit about the theology of the body.
And by the way, guys, this is where things are going to get real saucy.
But before we get to the theology of the body, we have to talk about a much more important thing than all of these essential moral questions.
We have to talk about toothbrushes.
We have to talk about Quip.
This is important.
Just as we keep our moral lives clean and we keep our ethical systems clean, so too must we clean our teeth.
And Quip is the new electric toothbrush that packs just the right amount of vibrations into a slimmer design at a fraction of the cost of bulkier traditional electric brushes.
Now, I will say this.
This is a little bit of an admission.
I didn't go to the dentist for probably five or seven years.
Because I'm a man, and so I don't think about these things, I don't care, I don't make doctor's appointments.
I also didn't go see the doctor for a long time.
Then I got engaged and sweet little Elisa just took over my life and made all of these appointments for me and said, if we're getting married, you're getting checked out, pal.
And so I go to the dentist and he excoriated me for several minutes over not using an electric toothbrush.
Apparently this is a new invention and they made it for a reason.
It's much more effective than using regular, I don't know, I pull a branch off a tree outside of my window.
An electric toothbrush is much better because it just gives you all of those vibrations and brushes much faster than you possibly could with your own hand.
So the guiding pulses alert you when to switch sides on Quip.
It makes the brushing the right amount of time effortless.
Quip also comes with a mount that suctions right to your mirror and unsticks to use as a cover for hygienic travel anywhere.
I have it just right on my mirror right now.
So it can go in your gym gag or your carry-on, and you don't need to be disgusting like me and just throw it in whatever the back of your car or whatever.
Because the thing that cleans your mouth should also be clean, Quip's subscription plan refreshes your brush on a dentist's recommended schedule, delivering new brush heads every three months for just $5.
This is the other thing.
I know it sounds like I'm just talking to the guys, but it's because we're so lazy about these things.
If I were not told to do it, I would not replace my toothbrush more than once every 15 to 18 years.
I just wouldn't do it.
It would be all mangled and all the little bristles are coming out.
Probably new bristles are growing on the other side of it.
You need to replace your toothbrush.
It's very important.
It will just make your teeth smile, especially, look, these days with new media, everybody can be a star and you can go on YouTube.
So you've got to have those pearly whites.
This is the moneymaker, baby.
Don't cheap out on yourself.
So, most toothbrushes don't get named one of Time Magazine's best inventions of the year, but Quip did.
Find out for yourself why.
It's backed by a network of over 10,000 dental professionals, including dentists, hygienists, dental students, and people who have teeth, like me.
I also think it's a great product.
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What's the URL, Marshall?
Getquip.com slash Knowles.
Okay, now that we've talked about our teeth, it's time to get into the theology of the body.
And the theology of the body tells us something about our mouth, too.
The theology of the body tells us that just as our mouths have a purpose to eat food, and our eyes have a purpose, so too do our sexual organs have a purpose.
And in spite of the bizarre things that each and every one of us wants to do to some degree with those organs, we should use them in accordance with that purpose.
But...
My question, Father, is should we use them only in accordance with that purpose?
So my mouth is for eating, but I also use it to smoke cigars, as did Popes Pius X and Pius XI. Even a saint did this.
Pope St.
John XXIII also smoked.
Similarly, the central unit of human life is the union of husband and wife.
It's an image of Christ and his church, the bridegroom and the bride.
But can other arrangements ever be permissible?
Or is tobacco different because the body is a temple and the temple needs incense rather than the imaginative uses of the sexual organs that we talk about so frequently in our culture today?
Great question.
And actually, I think that...
I love the incense idea in the temple of the Holy Spirit.
That's good.
I haven't heard that one yet.
This, I think, is my only contribution to theology.
I think that's the lone bit.
I have some students who have asked me to bless their cigarettes so they could have holy smokes.
And I'm like, I don't know, dude.
I don't know.
Maybe in a papal conclave you could use it.
I don't know.
Well, because it's white smoke, I guess, you know, going up.
You know, it's funny because I did a debate with a man.
He teaches theology.
And we were debating same-sex marriage.
In the course of the debate, he said something that was really profound.
It just stopped me.
He said, well, I'm not defined by my biology.
And I remember just thinking like, wow, wow, like I must have this look on my face that the moderator of the debate recognized that I don't have a very good poker face.
I was like, wow, this is she said, Father Schmitz, do you have something to say?
And I said, yeah, I realized we're not just right here in this in this moment.
We weren't talking just about marriage.
We weren't talking about sexual morality.
We weren't even talking about morality.
What we would have all came down to was a worldview.
And the worldview is either Gnosticism or it's Basically, enfleshed materialism, or enfold materialism.
And what I mean by that is, like, so the Gnostics would, or Manichees, would say that the body's bad, the body's not you.
You are truly your soul.
Whereas, as Christians, in the Christian worldview, we'd say, no, body and soul together.
And so, like, it was remarkable that this person was admitting that, because they're a theology teacher at a Catholic school, they were saying, no, basically, I'm Gnostic.
I'm not my body.
I'm not my body.
I'm just my spirit or something.
Yeah, my spirit, my soul, my psyche, whatever.
That's a really profound shift in this world because I think if we're going to have a debate about any morality issues, any sexuality issues, or any just like issues that pertain to what we do with our bodies, it's all going to come down to, well, the question, are you your body or not?
Is your body just a shell?
Is just a case?
Is it just that the true you is going to Ephemeral and disconnected from your body.
So you mentioned theology of the body, which is a term that came out of John Paul II's pontificate, his teaching.
And in that, he said, the body and it alone is capable of making visible the invisible, the spiritual and the divine.
Because if you think about this, we've never learned anything outside of our body.
Everything you and I have learned has been through our body, like through our eyes.
We read something or saw something through our ears.
We heard something.
We felt something.
We've never expressed love except in and through our bodies.
We've never expressed disgust except in and through our bodies.
So this reality is we've never known anyone without a body.
And yet there's this kind of worldview that says, but what I do with my body doesn't really matter because it doesn't touch my soul.
And so that's truly ultimately what it comes down to is, again, Gnosticism or Manichaeism.
So our starting point has to be, okay, are you your body and soul together or not?
Because if you're not, then we're going to have to figure another way to talk about these things.
If you are, then I think we can address the question you brought up, which is a really good question, which is, do things have a nature?
And is that nature fixed?
Or is that nature determined by how we want to use it?
And so...
What I would say is, I always like to ask the question, we get the idea of a thing's nature, the what it is-ness of a thing, by asking the question, what is it for?
So we know what a chair is because we know the what it's for-ness of a chair to sit on.
And we have the what it is-ness of a table, When we ask the what it's forness, okay, to set things on.
Right.
The what-it-is-ness of the Michael Knowles show is to spread covfefe, to spread covfefe galore to all of the world, of course.
Yes.
And so now you know what it's forness, and now you know the nature.
And so the question is, can I take something about the what it's forness and use it to my own end?
And the answer, of course, is yes, right?
So I can take the chair I'm sitting on, and I can set something on it.
And I'm not violating the nature or the what it's for-ness of the chair.
And I could, on this solid table I've got, I could sit on it and I'm not violating the what it's for-ness to set things on of the table.
But there are some things we can do that actually do violate the what it's for-ness.
For example, I couldn't take this chair I'm sitting on and like put a tree trunk and like split wood on it.
I'd pretty quickly violate the nature of the chair.
And same thing is true when it comes to our bodies.
If, the premise, we are our bodies, Then there's what it's for in us.
So let's look at the sexual act.
If you had a scientist who asked the question, what it's for?
What is it for?
You'd see at least two things.
And the two primary things that are there at every sexual act.
There's procreation.
That's what it's for.
And bonding of the couple.
That's what it's for.
And when you see this on a biological level, both of the things on the biological level, we're not even talking about religion at this point.
We're saying that, no, there are bonding hormones that get released When people enter into the sexual embrace.
So what it's for is the act for bonding.
And also it's the only action we know of that's oriented towards making new life.
So what it's for is procreation.
So does that mean that every single act has to be to have a child or every single act has to be for bonding?
Well, we recognize that.
I'm sure that, you know, you might know couples who have been in the situation where they're trying to conceive.
And so they might say, okay, so she's like, I'm ovulating right now, let's go.
That might not be specifically for bonding.
It's not the most romantic way to start an encounter, certainly.
Hey, the clock's running, buddy.
The clock's ticking, buddy.
Let's go, get in there.
You got it?
But not for bonding, but they're not violating bonding, right?
And by doing this, because they're both entering into this, as we imagine, a husband and wife.
Or you'd have a couple that, you know, they're not...
Not specifically intending to have a child come out of this, but they're not working against this.
They just simply are, we want to express our love for one another, but they're not working against the openness to life.
In those cases, they'd be using this for a certain purpose, but not using it contrary to its nature.
And that's the big question.
Because what we recognize is if I use a thing against this nature or try to work against the nature or the what it's forness of a thing, that's when things begin to break down.
This is the very difficult...
Oh, I'm sorry.
Go ahead.
No, no.
I've used my own purpose, but I can't extend that out to any purpose and not expect the nature to break down.
That's a wonderful explanation.
And this aspect, the unitive aspect, I think is what's so difficult in a culture that is obsessed with the erotic.
So the Christian answer to same-sex attraction, as you explain in the book, is celibacy.
And chastity, to which we're all called, but for people with same-sex attractions, that obviously results in celibacy.
Of course, that answer is easier said than done.
We're all called to be chaste, but as a former Manichaean who became a great saint, St.
Augustine said, Lord, make me chaste, but not yet.
Doesn't the call for people who are exclusively attracted to members of the same sex exclude them from erotic love, one of the great consolations of life, so I'm told?
Is that burden not too immense in a sex-obsessed culture such as ours that places so high a value on the erotic?
That's a great question, and I love how you phrased it, because we frame it in a sex-obsessed culture.
And so what makes things more difficult, I think, is the fact that we've reduced everything, like all the great...
So, John Paul II, again, this theology of the body, he said, he said, man cannot live without love.
Without love, man remains a being incomprehensible to himself.
He's a mystery to himself if he doesn't experience love.
Now, we hear that, we think that, is the Pope talking about, because what we've taken is this big concept of love, And we've reduced it to romantic love.
And we've taken this concept of the romantic love and reduced it to sex.
So what it sounds like the Pope is saying is, man cannot live without sex.
Without sex, he remains as being incomprehensible to himself.
His life is senseless unless he has sex.
And yet, the great minds and the great hearts, the great lives of history have said, yeah, eros, you know, romantic love or erotic love, is a good.
And we would, as Catholic Christians, we would say, exactly, it's a good.
But it's not even the greatest love.
Because I love...
I really like C.S. Lewis.
He's one of my guys.
I believe Tolkien referred to him as his heretic friend, and he is...
I do love C.S. Lewis.
I love the man.
I devour him regularly.
Seriously.
So in The Four Loves, he talks about these four kinds of love.
Eros, or Storge, which is your affection.
Eros, which is the romantic love.
And then he says, but there's philia.
And philia is not just storge, like buddy-ness, but is true friendship.
And he...
He says, he maintains and makes a great case for it, that philia is even more rare, therefore more precious, and even more life-giving than eros.
Which is why, probably, I imagine that you're, as you're preparing to get married, that you'd be saying, like, I'm not just in love with her.
She's also my best friend.
You hear this all the time.
I'm marrying my best friend.
And I always, whenever my fiancé says this, I always try to temper this because I agree with you.
Friendship is so rare these days.
And I'm blessed to have a number of friendships that I think rise to this level of great friendship, of true friendship.
Not just seeing your buddies and catching a baseball game or something, but real friendship.
Standing alongside one another and looking at the same thing.
And One of which does include my fiancée.
But I always say, well, you know, my best final best buddy.
What are we going to go to the bar together?
I don't know.
My best female friend.
That's right, yes.
She is certainly my best female friend.
But you hear this so much, and it seems to me, when people say I'm marrying my best friend, they are aspiring to this sort of friendship, this philia, that has been lost, that ancient cultures, and even really just the pre-modern, It's recognized and spoke so highly of, and that really seems to be lacking because all our culture wants to talk about are saucier things than that.
Absolutely.
And so in that culture, right, where true friendship is like, well, I guess it's a consolation.
It's a consolation prize.
Like, maybe you have a true friend, but what you really want is a lover.
Yes, it is more difficult.
But I would say that, I mean, there's a number of ministries that There's even a group in the Catholic Church called Courage, and Courage is many women who experience same-sex attraction are saying, but we know the call of Jesus, we know the call to be chaste, that it's difficult, but it's not impossible.
And I know, I mean, dozens and dozens, just personally, and hundreds and hundreds that I have encountered, who are living really healthy, holy, rich lives because experiencing same-sex attraction is not a death sentence.
I think sometimes people think that that's the case if you're going to be Catholic or if you're going to be Christian, that it's like, yeah, well, too bad to be you, man.
You're going to have a terrible life.
It's never, yeah.
It's going to be something that's going to be difficult, but every one of us has something difficult that we have to deal with and we're going to wrestle with our entire lives that sometimes opens up doors for us and opportunities and sometimes it just makes life really difficult.
But the people that I've encountered Who have same-sex attraction, who also are saying, but no, I'm called to be chaste, and so I know what that means, are living really, really full lives with true friendship.
And that's not something...
I mean, I think if most people knew what true friendship really was, or really is, They would say, oh wow, that's a blessed life, not a cursed life.
That's interesting.
That is one of the jokes sometimes you hear among guys who like to go to the cigar bar and have some whiskeys and smoke cigars.
You say, well, without the erotic component, being gay wouldn't be so bad.
The erotic component doesn't sound great, but other than that, it's a pretty good time.
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Okay, on the real political nature of this lobby, I think this lobby that tries to make our culture talk about sex and sexual issues I think this lobby that tries to make our culture all the time, it seems to me that the issue of same-sex marriage is part and parcel of a feminist ideology that ironically seeks to erase all gender difference.
So the premise of same-sex marriage seems to be that men and women are exactly the same, that there isn't sexual difference, because a very Basically, if M plus W equals M plus M equals W plus W, then M equals W. They're the same thing, rather than being complementary.
Why does the left want to erase sexual difference?
It's a great question.
Like you had said earlier, I can understand the difference.
I often find that I feel like, or I believe that I can understand the perspective and the ideology or the thought process of people who say, I want to advocate for same-sex marriage, I want to advocate for transgenderism.
I think I get the argument.
But when it comes to this, like, why?
When you ask the question, but why?
Then I don't.
Then at this point, I'm thinking, like, what's the ulterior or ultimate end?
It kind of eludes me.
Because it seems like the ultimate...
Conclusion is a very, very different culture than we have.
One that does not necessarily flourish, but one that kind of just is everything's up for grabs.
And so when it comes to a lot of the motivations of people who would advocate for same-sex marriage or would advocate for kind of advocating transgender stuff, it seems like what I... I'm talking with some high schoolers.
Asking them about this, the response was like, well, I don't know.
I just feel bad that they can't get married.
Oh, well, that's it.
And so I think that there might be some people who are like kind of the masterminds.
I have no idea who they would be.
But I think at the core, the reason why the tide has shifted so quickly is because we've abandoned thinking and we've given it all over to the feeling, to emotion.
And so the reason, quote unquote, reason why the tide has shifted so much is because we've abandoned reason and we're just saying, well, I just, I feel bad.
It makes me feel sad to think that someone would feel sad.
And of course, you know, you and I, we don't want to make people unnecessarily sad or want to make, put undue, like, suffering in their lives.
But that's not the same thing as saying, well, but is it so?
Like, you know, so here's a person who would say, I don't, I'm in a man's body, but I've always felt like a woman.
Well, first of all, I have to ask the question, how do you know?
Meaning, like, how do you know what a woman feels like?
I don't like playing baseball or football.
Like, okay, that's a stereotype right there.
I'm not going to advocate a stereotype.
If you're a man who doesn't embrace a lot of masculine things, like you don't want your man-crate or whatever, that's fine.
Well, that's unforgivable.
That, I believe, is actually an unforgivable sin in the Scripture.
I have to refresh it, yeah.
I apologize.
But that sense of like, I feel like a woman.
How do you know what a woman feels like?
And therefore, all you know is what you feel like, which is, I feel disconnected from my body.
Now, for my part, I have emotion.
I have a compassion for that.
And I have pity on that.
But the answer, I don't think, is to say, oh, in that case, you must not be a man.
Right.
I mean, I don't know.
I'm sure you've experienced, or not experienced, but you've encountered...
This condition called BIID, which is Body Integrity Identity Disorder.
And what BIID is, is a real thing where people will say things like, this isn't my hand.
They've always felt like this is really part of me.
And so they would go in to say the surgeon and say, could you amputate?
Why?
It's perfectly healthy.
But it's not my hand.
And now the medical community has universally said, no, don't do that.
Because why?
Because that is their hand.
And the problem is not the hand.
The problem is there's a disconnect between their perception and reality.
But when it comes to transgenderism, when it comes to sex, it seems like we just forget common sense.
And so if someone would say, this isn't my hand, no, no, no, that really is.
You're just mistaken.
Let's help you get to a place where you can bring it together.
But someone says, these aren't my genitals.
You're like, wait, wait.
Well, then let's have surgery.
Let's get rid of those.
Well, we have to get rid of those.
That's a different kind of organ.
Doesn't seem to make sense.
Of course.
And this issue of transgender does seem to be one where people are suffering.
That sounds like a terrible condition, and I certainly feel for people who have it, but they seem to be looking for relief in all of the wrong places.
The pioneers at Johns Hopkins who Who began the gender mutilation surgery have stopped doing it because they realized that even the suicide rates of people who suffer from this did not decrease after surgery.
So even the operation that everyone expected to give relief to this condition didn't quite do it.
And this does seem to be the real issue because I always fear...
When we're talking about this issue, people didn't choose to be born attracted to members of the same sex.
I don't think.
I don't think anyone ever said, yes, today I'm going to do that.
And that is a really sad condition if one looks at a traditional Christian view of things or a Jewish view of things or...
Any other traditional sexual ethic.
And they say, I'm excluded from this.
And I really wish I weren't excluded from erotic love or from pursuing my sexual desires.
And I think a lot of the time...
Christians, and the Catholic Church in particular, are called haters on this.
They think that we just hate gay people and we don't want them to be happy, when really what we're saying is this isn't a normative statement, it's a positive statement that this is not what marriage is.
How do you respond to the accusations of hatred and bigotry?
It seems to me that it's similar to saying I like Apples, but I won't call an apple an orange, this question of gay marriage.
And they say, well, why do you hate oranges?
And I don't hate it.
I like oranges very much.
I want oranges to thrive.
I like orange juice.
I'm probably screwing up the metaphor somewhere here, but I don't hate oranges.
I just think that apples are not oranges.
How do you respond to those accusations of hatred?
Yeah, I would say at least two things.
One is...
I remember someone very, very close to me, when he came out to me, he wanted me to watch a video.
So I watched this kind of documentary.
It was made by a man who had a relationship with another man.
And it's tragically where the other man died.
It's a true story.
He said, I want you to watch this because one guy said, when I came out to my parents and introduced him to Shane was the man's name.
My nieces and nephews called him Uncle Shane and my whole family loved him and it was great.
But then when Shane told his family about me, they said, if you two ever show up on our front door, you'll be met at the door with a shotgun.
And I remember him showing me this video and I'm thinking, what does he want?
So the video ends and he says, what do you think?
And I said, are those my only two choices?
Because that sense of like, I'm gonna have to embrace and agree and celebrate everything you choose, or I hate you?
Yeah, because I don't like either of those.
And it was funny because I probably am not closer to another human being on this planet than I am to him.
I love him very, very much.
His dad even said something interesting.
His dad said, no good parent agrees with every decision their child makes.
Because that's not a real relationship.
He said, some parents do, but no good parent does.
That's not a real relationship, is it?
Where I can't disagree with you and you can't disagree with me because I have to just always celebrate every choice you make.
No, I don't maintain that anyone would choose to, you know, feel transgender or to choose to experience abstraction.
And so I'm not saying that.
I'm saying choose to act on something.
And I think that when it comes to being, you know, accused of being haters, the church or Christians or whoever need to be really, really clear about like, no, no, no, no, no.
We love this person.
It's actually, so this man, back in 2012, we had a gay marriage debate in Minnesota.
And so all these lawn signs all over the place.
And so there was, you know, redefined marriage and some keep marriage defined well.
And I remember this man had come over with his partner at the time to the house and everyone in the house just absolutely loved the two of them because they're great guys.
And we just, of course, I mean, you know what we believe and we know what you believe.
But we're going to love you.
And it was so interesting because as they drove away, they saw the lawn, the yard sign.
And one said to the other, they said, wait a second, I'm just so confused.
Why?
Because they loved us.
Yeah, but they have this sign.
Like, yeah.
And it was this cognitive disconnect of, wait, you can disagree with me.
And still love me?
Absolutely is the case.
I think the popular press and the mainstream media and lefties, the secular left, they don't understand when Pope Francis calls gay marriage, the lobby for redefining marriage and redefining gender and sexuality, calls that a machination of the devil, but simultaneously says, who am I to judge?
I have plenty of my own My own sins of the flesh.
And even Dante puts sins of the flesh much higher up than sins of deception or whatever.
In terms of levels of hell, the adulterers and sins of the flesh, they're kind of swirling around in the upper echelons.
It's really the betrayers who are way down lower.
It can get far worse.
And that second piece of when you say, how is this not hate?
I remember talking with someone and using the example of baseball and football.
So, you know, baseball, there's a lot of flexibility when it comes to baseball.
You can have, you know, the bases 90 feet apart like normal.
You can have, you know, an ump.
You can not have no ump.
You can either do it yourself.
You can have the bases actually being those canvas things stuck with whatever.
Or you can have, you know, first base is someone's mitt, second base is someone's t-shirt, you know, third base is, you know, a hat.
There's some flexibility, but to play baseball, you need at least three essential elements.
You need a baseball bat, and you need to try to hit the ball with the bat to score a run.
Those are the essential things.
You take away the baseball and replace it with a softball.
You have a different game.
It's called softball.
You replace it with a football?
Yeah.
You take away the bat, and now you have catch.
You're playing catch.
You take away the trying to hit the ball with the bat to run around the bases to score a run, and you're just having batting practice or fielding practice.
But to play baseball, you need those three essential things.
So it's not limitlessly undefined.
Now, here comes a football player and says, hey, I want to play baseball.
I'm like, great.
You're up next.
He says, no, no, but I want to keep playing football, but I want you to call it baseball.
He's like, well, we can't do that.
We usually can because, you know, you guys don't have an ump or, you know, we have an ump.
Or if you play on a field, we play on a field.
You have teams, we have teams.
It's the same game.
I say, okay, but you don't have the essential elements.
I'm not even gonna get to the point of complaining about football and saying it's not as good as baseball.
I'm just saying they're different things.
And unless we can define a thing, to say it's different, in some people's minds, means you're saying it's bad.
And they're like, wait a second, but let's just start with saying these are different things.
That's a great point.
To say a marriage and a monogamous same-sex relationship I don't even have to say one is bad.
I can just say they're different.
That's right.
And let's leave it at that.
Inherent in that, without making any moral statement whatsoever, you're making simply a categorical statement on the nature of two things.
That is a great point.
Now, much more important than any of these things.
This has been an excellent discussion, pretty illuminating, even for me, and I've just finished reading your book, which I enjoy very much.
Much more important than any of these things.
Father...
Democrats have become very extreme on abortion.
They now insist on killing pain-capable late-term babies.
Next up will be fourth and fifth trimester abortion.
They support redefining marriage into nothing.
Next up will be polygamy and sologamy.
That's the new thing where you marry yourself.
More on that on another episode, but it seems pretty rough.
I think it's from Sex and the City, as are many terrible things in our culture.
According to Pew Research, while all the votes were relatively close...
Catholic voters in America picked Al Gore over George Bush, Obama over McCain, Obama over Romney in 2000, 2008 and 2012.
A large number of Catholics also supported John Kerry and even Hillary Clinton.
Why do Catholics vote for Democrats?
I think it goes back to this kind of sleight of hand.
And the sleight of hand has to do with...
Catholic social teaching is a really important thing.
And it's a real thing.
A real thing is a really important thing.
Catholic social teaching.
And so when you were raised Catholic, you hear like, okay, care for the poor.
Care for those who are marginalized.
Care for those who are weak and those that the world wants to forget about.
You're told this.
It's true.
And then comes along a political party that says, hey, we care for the weak.
We care for the marginalized.
We care for the poor.
We care for those who are bullied.
We care for all these kinds of things.
And I think there's kind of a bait and switch kind of thing happening where Catholics say, well, yeah, that's what happened.
My conscience has at least been formed in that way.
And so, well, I know that they support abortion all the way to the end.
I mean, even like, you know, partial birth abortion that people would vote for, this craziness.
It's going to become a fourth trimester abortion.
That's going to be the next thing.
I'm positive of it.
And then, well, yeah, but what about all those people that they're helping?
They're helping refugees.
They're helping this and this and this.
And I just think it's a lack of good formation.
And I would even say not only formation, I would say it's lack of courage.
That's absolutely true.
Because when it comes down to it, I think that as a church, a lot of Catholics have become really, really comfortable.
And we're comfortable with status quo.
And so I got a call the other day from a youth group leader who was saying that there's some young people in her school who They were in South Dakota, in Sturgis, South Dakota.
There's a group of transgender high school students in this high school.
I'm like, that's interesting.
And she said, yeah, our youth group kids, you know, we're trying to be nice to them.
They were just really mean back to them.
And I said, what do you mean really mean?
Well, they gave them dirty looks when they said hello in the hallway.
I thought, okay, well, let's pump the brakes.
That's not being really mean.
That's a ubiquitous sort of thing that happens in high schools.
And yeah.
Yeah.
And I was like, and so I was like, you know, I understand what's going on, but But we need to actually prepare the people and prepare ourselves for like, it's okay if people don't like you.
Jesus actually even said, people are going to hate you.
For my sake.
And then that sense of like being able to say, let's, I'm going to use a, grow a pair.
I was going to say, I don't know if we can say that on air.
On this show, anything goes.
That's some of the most polite thing you can say on my show.
I meant a pair of eyeballs and really see the truth is what I meant to say.
I'm sorry, but please finish the point.
No, but I think what it means is formation and courage.
And I think that's one, there's two areas that we're really lacking as a Catholic Church is formation and really giving us encouragement to be courageous.
I love that point so much.
I think that's how I've got to sign off my show from now on.
As Father Michael Schmitz tells us all, grow a pair of eyes to see the truth.
Father Michael Schmitz, author of Made for Love, Same-Sex Attractions, and The Catholic Church.
And you can catch him on YouTube.
Father Schmitz, thank you so much for being here.
I've really enjoyed it.
And for everybody else, that's our show.
That's our whole show today.
Come back tomorrow.
Tomorrow, by the way, is our 100th episode.
You don't want to miss that.
We have some fun things planned.
We've got crazy new technology that is going to shape our show tomorrow.
But you'll have to tune in to see it.
That is it.
I am Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
Tune in tomorrow.
We'll do it all again.
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