Homosexual Activism Meets Catholic Kindergarten

With same-sex “marriage” issues very much in the public eye in recent years, “gay rights” campaigners have made a number of well-publicized strides in advancing their social agenda. Even the Catholic school system in many parts of the country has played host — willingly in some places, unwittingly in others — to homosexual activism. In every case, activists seek to manipulate both the Church and her parochial schools in an effort to effect the normalization of homosexual relations throughout society. Ostensibly, the Catholic Church, with her clear-cut teachings on the sinful nature of same-sex unions, ought to be one of the toughest customers. Nevertheless, recent history shows that that’s hardly the case.

Over the past decade, activists have succeeded in getting some Catholic schools to adjust their curricula to include “gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered” ideology in classes — even in math class! They have also pushed sensitivity workshops on Catholic faculty members and, among students, promoted — usually with success — homosexual support groups dubbed “Gay-Straight Alliances.” Catholic high schools that have been queered by “gay” activists now survey students on their “homophobia,” publish “gay” newspapers, have queer literature in their libraries, and permit same-sex couples to dance at their high school proms. At least one all-male Catholic prep school has a same-sex dance club.

One of the newest tactics is to sensitize the parents of Catholic school students by appealing to the twin dogmas of tolerance and compassion. Over the past year this scenario has played out at St. John the Baptist School in Costa Mesa, Calif. What makes this case particularly notable is that this Catholic grade school was taken over several years ago by the Norbertine Fathers of St. Michael’s Abbey in Silverado, Calif., a religious order that boasts one of the finest reputations for orthodoxy on the West Coast.

In a nutshell, Mike Farina and Ron Morelos enrolled two of their adopted sons in the kindergarten class at St. John’s parish school in September 2004. The two men live in a same-sex domestic partnership with a total of four legally adopted children. St. John parents became aware of the couple’s living situation after Farina and Morelos “very visibly” began to show up at the school, often together arm-in-arm with their younger children, to pick up their 5-year-old kindergartners at the end of the school day. According to parents, both men wore traditional wedding rings, signifying that they viewed their partnership as a “marriage,” even though such a status has not yet been legally accorded by the State of California. Parents also discovered that Farina was quoted in The New York Times (Jan. 12, 2004) about his same-sex living situation in a favorable article about “married” homosexual men who choose to be “stay-at-home dads.” Farina, identified as a 40-year-old who left his job as an engineer, recounted his struggle of trying to get his adopted children to bond with him.