LOS ANGELES (EWTN News) — Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez says the state and federal governments are strengthening their own authority at the expense of American families with new or proposed rules regarding video games, sexually transmitted-disease vaccines, and lessons on homosexuality in the history curriculum.
“There was a time not too long ago when American society encouraged family values and tried to strengthen the bonds of parents and children,” the archbishop wrote in a July 5 column for his archdiocese’s weekly newspaper. “Recent events in our state and nation remind us that’s not always the case anymore.”
In his column, Archbishop Gomez spoke with concern about a June 27 Supreme Court ruling that dismissed a California law banning the sale or rental of violent video games to minors. He said it was “absurd” for video game makers to claim that their right to free expression was being violated by a law blocking their access to young people.
The archbishop also drew attention to two bills that could soon become a part of California state law. One allows children ages 12 and up to receive medication to prevent sexually transmitted diseases without the consent of their parents, while another requires textbooks to highlight homosexual historical figures.
Archbishop Gomez’s comments on the Supreme Court ruling echoed Justice Clarence Thomas’ dissent in the 7-2 decision on video-game violence. The archbishop praised Thomas’ recognition of America’s Founding Fathers as leaders who respected “the role of the family” and “worked to strengthen parents’ authority and rights.”
In today’s society, the archbishop observed, “young people are often treated as a ‘target audience’ for corporate and media messages that bypass parents and undermine parental authority and moral values.”
Another attempt to bypass parents, he warned, could come directly from the state of California. The state Senate is considering a bill that would allow children over 12 years old to decide if they want to receive vaccinations or other medications to prevent STDs.
Archbishop Gomez fears the law would encourage young people to “engage in activities that are contrary to their parents’ moral values — and then to lie about it or keep it secret from their parents.” He explained that children are not mature enough to think about the consequences of complicated medical decisions.
“This legislation would have children face these decisions without parental guidance — and under pressure from adults and corporate interests that have financial and other motives to promote these medications,” he warned.
Meanwhile, on July 5, a bill was sent to California Gov. Jerry Brown that would require history classes and textbooks in California schools to include the contributions of “lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender” Americans. Archbishop Gomez said the bill was “another example of the government interfering with parents’ rights to be their children’s primary educators.”
“This amounts to the government rewriting history books based on pressure-group politics,” he said.
In response to these worrying trends, Archbishop Gomez called on families to build a future based on respect for family life and God’s law.
“As we pray for one another this week,” he stated, “let us commit ourselves to promoting the God-given rights of parents and families in California and in our country.”
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May God bless his Excellency Archbishop Gomez for highlighting these critical issues for Calif. Catholics. It should be noted that the person who sponsored this expensive and despicable textbook legislation is “Catholic” Calif. Assemblyman Thomas “Tom” Ammiano who has a long record of defying key Church teachings. While a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors it was Ammiano who wrote and pushed the reprehensible and bigoted Anti-Catholic resolution calling his Eminence Cardinal Levada “hateful and discriminatory” for forbidding Catholic Charities from placing adoptive children with homosexual couples and who then went further and publicly urged the staff of the local Catholic Charities branch to disregard the “ignorant” Cardinal’s instructions.
California Catholics will soon know if another prominent Catholic politician Gov. Jerry Brown will respect the considered moral advice of Archbishop Gomez or choose to willfully ignore it. It is bad enough that God has been banned from our public schools for the last 50 years (we see the fruits of that evil all around us everyday) it is quite another thing to “Institutionalize” another Evil in schools by mandating “lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender” propaganda for children. The good Bishop did not mention “millstones” and the deep blue sea rather it was our Lord and Savior Himself who spoke of these.
Gov. Brown the integrity of your Catholic training and upbringing is in your hands: show real courage and VETO this text book bill, do not let the deposit of Faith passed on to you pour through your fingers like sand; remember that it is not merely Catholic voters who are watching you but God as well.
An update - “Catholic” Governor Brown has now signed Leno’s law mandating that ALL public schools portray lesbian, gay, bisexual and the transgendered as positive role models for ALL children in the state’s public schools.
“History should be honest,” Brown said on his California State website. Ok lets be honest Governor Brown. Mandating that children K through 12 be taught to admire homosexuality, same-sex marriage, bisexuality and cross-dressing, and even “sex change” medical operations represents a fundamental rejection of the TRUE order of human sexuality.
Governor Brown if “History should be honest” then it should be noted that you now share a unique place on the shelf right next to Herr Goebbels of Nazi Germany. Why is this so? Goebbels was the “Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda”; by signing this law YOU have made ALL California Schools into Ministries of Public “Enlightenment” and pro-homosexual Propaganda. Like Herr Goebbels both of you had the benefit of a Jesuit education. But just like Herr Goebbels instead of using this powerful education for good you have instead chosen a different path marked by an overriding political ambition.
Governor Brown in all historic honesty it does not take a Jesuit education to know that this law WILL cause untold misery and harm, both physical and spiritual to so many of these children.
A small watered down idea of the gross evil you have advanced and are continuing to advance can be seen in the video linked below from “It’s Elementary”, a training video for homosexual activist teachers across the country. The video shows what is already happening in elementary schools in Massachusetts and New York.
http://www.massresistance.org/media/video/brainwashing.html
Since the majority of Catholic students attend public schools it is now time for every Diocese in California to have their lawyers prepare appropriate boiler plate “opt out” forms which parents need only fill out the names of their children and sign which would require that their children be excused from these perverse trainings. These should be shared with all other Christian denominations in each Diocese. These should be made available next to parish bulletins especially at the beginning of the school year to help Parents protect their children from Harvey Milk day and all the other homosexual Pol Pot re-education efforts where they could instead go to study hall and catch up on real homework or study mathematics like Russian or Chinese students are allowed to do.
I can’t ever recall seeing the kind of hate and misinformation outlined by veritas.
this is not in any way Christian.
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