When a student from a Catholic high school in rural Missouri was assigned to write a research paper about the “moral dilemma” of same-sex marriage, the 11th grader instead turned in a hefty, 127-page paper titled “Gay Marriage Is Fabulous.”
The 17-year old student, who has remained anonymous but goes by averagesmurf on Reddit, elaborated that “the exact words my teacher said in class were that you have to provide the church teaching to ‘show and prove that the church's position is right.’"
According to the student, the assignment was inspired by a heated classroom debate they had with the teacher in a class called “Morality.” The next day, all discussions on the subject matter were prohibited and a video “insinuating that homosexuality is basically a choice or something caused by abuse and ‘unhealthy relationships’” was shown.
Having begun the assignment in January, the student finally completed the research paper this past month. It tackles male patriarchy, conversion therapy, and the “choice theory” of being gay and is supported by a shocking 52 footnotes as well as a lengthy works cited page.
The paper has surfaced at the same time lawmakers across the country are drafting legislation that would refuse same-sex couples to adopt children under “religious belief” claims.
Republican congressmen in Texas are attempting to pass House Bill 3859, which many critics have called “discriminatory” towards the LGBTQ community. Dubbed the “Freedom to Serve Children Act,” the bill would allow adoption agencies to reject potential parents based on their sexual orientation and legally protect the agencies from discrimination claims.
It passed through the house on May 9 and is on track to head to the Senate for a vote.
Last week, Missouri approved a bill that would make it easier to discriminate against lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender employees.
Currently, a person in the state can be fired from their job, evicted from their apartment, or kicked out of a restaurant for being gay. Now, the Senate bill 43 makes it more difficult for victims of discrimination to prove discrimination cases against former employers.
The state’s governor, Eric Greitens, has until July 14 to sign the bill or veto it.
In Kentucky, family court judge Mitchell Nance announced last week that he would not grant adoptions to same-sex parents because of “personal beliefs” and religious objections to homosexuality.
Nance could not defend his case that it is not in the “best interest” of children to have lesbian or gay parents.
The Supreme Court ruled in 2015 that same-sex couples had a constitutional right to marry and to all the “rights and responsibilities intertwined with marriage” — guaranteeing the right to adopt and parent.
And yet, since then, the religious attack on LGBTQ equality has seemed to pick up momentum.
Averagesmurf, the student and self-identified bisexual, shared their thesis: “God created you and he made no mistakes, God created me bisexual, and he made no mistakes, and he creates some people gay, and makes no mistakes: 'For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected' (1 Tim. 4.4-5). Marriage is not between man and woman, marriage is between love and love. Love is not wrong, love is not a mistake, love is not an abomination, love is just love."