Language of Love: A Letter to My Kids
Author: Andrew Comiskey
June 12, 2023
After I spoke to one of my
children about why I take pains (and risk causing pain) to not use LGBTQ+
language in defining people, I wrote down my thoughts, cheered on by St. John
Paul II: ‘Let us not lose sight of the essential bond between truth and
freedom. To defend universal and unchanging normal norms is not to demean
anyone but rather to serve humanity’s true freedom.’
Language that defines
people and their sexuality matters. Proper description of who humanity is as
male and female, made in His image, honors the Creator (Genesis 1 and 2) and
those He created. Karl Barth upholds the ‘radical duality of male and female as
the root of all other fellowship…the command of God shows us irrefutably that
man can only be genuinely human with woman, and woman with man’ (Doctrine of
Creation); similarly, St. John Paul ll unites humanity in one sexual nature and
goal: that ‘deep orientation to personally dignify what is intrinsic to his
masculinity and her femininity’ (
Theology of the Body 131:4).
We are designed to grow in
dynamic reliance with this other who is utterly like us and different to such a
degree that we are roused, challenged and called to transcend ourselves as to forge
a union capable of creating and tending new life.
We are all sexually
disintegrated; God always seeks to redeem our sorry ‘gift-giving’ from the
catastrophe of sin (Genesis 3 to the end of Scripture). Brokenness is sourced
in misogyny and misandry (opposite-sex wounds and retaliations) and fans out to
include LGBTQ+ identification. The good news? Jesus invites all sinners to own
their divides and entrust themselves wholly to Himself. Only Jesus through His
Church can restore the broken image in humanity: the entire spectrum of sexual
and relational sin.
We Christians have a
responsibility to cooperate with Jesus in helping people to know His way for
our sexual humanity. We can do so well or poorly. If we want to please Him, we
will love people by getting to know the whole of them in which frank
conversations can occur that highlight the truth of their authentic personhood.
As Spirit leads, we invite them to heed Jesus and the echoes of Eden that still
resound in their image-bearing humanity.
Each one is simply a man
or woman in whom God delights, designed to love well!
It does no-one any good to
adopt the language of disorder through which people identify with their fallen tendencies.
We confirm and empower ‘false selves’ by using the language of ‘gay’, ‘trans’,
‘they and them’, adulterer, sex addict, abuser or abused, etc. Though each identity
describes disorder, fashioning a self on those desires confuses and frustrates redemption.
God always summons the man
or woman of His design. And so should we! Our friends don’t like this. In their
fragility, many are insulted that we will not embrace their new
identifications. We navigate this carefully, acknowledging the painful difference
in how both parties understand and define sexual humanity while assuring them
we wholly love the man or woman before us and don’t want to reduce them to a wound
or tendency!
We can be respectful and
truthful. We can see everyone we meet as men and women created to dignify others,
especially the opposite sex, through their gifts of self. That may be far from
their self-image and practice; still, God’s heart for each one shines through
our proper seeing and saying. After all, He is the One in whose image they were
made, beloved ones that He is always seeking to redeem.
You, Christian, may be the
only person in their universe who possesses this true vision and who dares, as
the Spirit leads, to express it.
The language of truth
regarding what it means to be sexually human matters more than ever. I just
introduced myself to a ‘gay-identified’ neighbor (notice the reference? I acknowledge
his self-identification without agreeing with it) who had just unfurled a huge
rainbow flag for Pride Month. I told him that I came over to know him more because
he had made himself known to us all in a very vulnerable area of his life. I urged
him to consider how our bodies already possess the good news of our gift-giving;
‘Maybe if we lived that truth well we wouldn’t need flags.’ He looked puzzled
but intrigued. Another conversation…
‘To deprive a young person
of clear and firm guidance towards responsible manhood or womanhood that is
based on evident physical reality, namely the sexual complementarity of men and
women, is careless.’ R. R. Reno
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