Ed Vitagliano
AFA Journal news editor
October 2002 – The breakdown of the nuclear family in many instances has deprived children of one, and sometimes both, of their biological parents. This tragedy has created a vacuum that often has to be filled by stepparents, grandparents, and well-intentioned but unrelated adults. Sometimes there just don’t seem to be enough adults to go around.
Society, however, seems poised to follow one tragedy with another – the ever-growing cultural momentum for placing children in the care of homosexuals. The latest push has come from Big Brothers Big Sisters of America (BBBSA), who have decided to force local affiliates to allow homosexuals to serve as mentors for children and youth.
While there is not room here to lay out a complete case about the dangers to children posed by exposure to the homosexual lifestyle, AFA’s position regarding the BBBSA policy can be summarized in the following three statements:
1. AFA believes that homosexuality is not a lifestyle that should be modeled in a positive way before children.
No one could ever imagine the circumstances under which BBBSA would allow members of the Ku Klux Klan to mentor children under its care – and rightfully so. Moral convention wouldn’t allow it, because most of us see the danger in pairing impressionable children with adults who might influence them in the wrong way.
AFA believes that homosexuality is an unnatural and unhealthy lifestyle.
It is a lifestyle which carries with it increased risks of numerous sexually transmitted diseases, mental illnesses, drug and alcohol abuse, domestic violence received from the hand of live-in lovers, and even suicide. It makes no more sense for society to celebrate this lifestyle than for it to celebrate alcoholism. Certainly homosexuality should not be paraded before our children as simply another natural, harmless choice, equivalent to heterosexuality.
From a Christian perspective, of course, homosexuality is a sin, and it is one which comes in for particularly harsh condemnation in both Old and New Testaments. It is not only a sexual sin, like fornication and adultery – which violate God’s design for marriage – but it is a sexual sin which violates God’s design for humanity itself, for it destroys the male/female model.
2. AFA believes homosexuality can confuse impressionable children and teens about their own sexuality.
In a 1992 survey of nearly 35,000 Minnesota youth, homosexual researcher Gary Remafedi of the University of Minnesota found that, at age 12, almost 26% of kids were not sure whether they were homosexual or heterosexual. By age 18, however, that confusion had shrunk considerably – to 5% in another study’s estimate – and most kids saw themselves as heterosexual.
Obviously those years leave even healthy, well-adjusted young people vulnerable to confusion. However, common sense suggests that “children at risk,” as the BBBSA Web site characterizes the kids involved in its mentoring programs, might be even more susceptible to confusion about their own sexual orientation – especially since many of these children are missing at least one parent in the home.
Pro-family groups fear that such confusion can lead to homosexual experimentation. While most professional homosexual activists ridicule the idea that young people can be recruited into the “gay” lifestyle, some are so bold as to recommend recruitment
Dr. Graham Willett, for example, author of Living Out Loud, told one homosexual newspaper, “I think the idea that sexuality is genetic is crap. I think there is absolutely no evidence for it at the moment.…I think we should be recruiting people to homosexuality. It’s a great lifestyle and something everybody should have the right to experience.”
3. AFA believes that a dangerous subset within the homosexual community is interested in sex with children and teenagers.
There, we said it – although many are afraid to talk about the elephant in the middle of the living room.
It seems that common sense is nowhere to be found when the subject of homosexuality and children comes up. Most of us would simply refuse to allow the BBBSA to pair our 13-year-old daughter with a 25-year-old man.
It’s not that all 25-year-old males seek to have inappropriate relationships with underage youth. It’s simply that considerations of propriety and, yes, even wisdom, suggest that such situations should be avoided. Why? Since males are (generally-speaking) attracted to females and vice versa, one should not place people in situations where temptations can arise.
So why wouldn’t that same sense of propriety dictate that homosexual men, for example, should not be paired with 13-year-old boys? This seems to have been precisely the problem in the Catholic Church, where homosexual priests have created a scandal of staggering proportions, and boys have been molested and their lives ruined.
There is plenty of evidence to suggest that homosexuals, as a group, molest children and youth far out of proportion to their numbers in society.
The fact remains that many homosexuals seem enamored with “intergenerational sex,” which led award-winning lesbian author Paula Martinac to fret: “This romanticized vision of adult-youth sexual relations has been a staple of gay literature and has made appearances, too, in gay-themed films.… When some gay men venerate adult-youth sex as affirming [for the young person] while simultaneously declaring ‘We’re not pedophiles,’ they send an inconsistent message to society….”
That inconsistency also seems to have eluded the decision-makers at Big Brothers Big Sisters. 
For a more complete treatment of this matter, see AFA Journal, March, April, May, and June, 1999.
