The Internet has become, among many other things, a kind of guide to life.

The Bible is out; Internet advice is in. The problems we now face in the early years of the 21st century are those for which sacred Scripture, presumably, has no answers.

A case in point is the awkward problem of meeting same-sex in-laws. The TV sit-com “It's All Relative” explores the conflict between a girl whose parents are homosexual WASP dads and their relationships with her “conservative” Boston in-laws. Although critics complain that the show panders to stereotypes (“gays are fussy, straights are slobs”), they are pleased to see that both sets of parents are “loving” and “responsible.” Love is apparently all we need.

Jenny is a real 25-year-old daughter of two male homosexuals. Dan is her fiancé. Bill, who is Dan's Catholic, blue-collar father, is more than uncomfortable about his future in-laws. “I don't want to validate the gay partnership by treating them as any other couple,” he protests, “and the thought of even being in the same room with them makes me sick.”

At this point, Dave Singleton, author of the Internet-posted article “Meeting the Gay In-Laws,” tells us how to categorize Bill's attitude. It is, he casually informs us, an unfortunate example of “religion-based homophobia.” Such an attitude, of course, is never to be approved, tolerated or accepted. “Younger people are much more accepting,” says Dan. Jenny agrees, adding, “Normal to them is when people love each other.” These judgments are rather severe and pretty much relegate Bill to the status of a moral troglodyte.

Singleton is not stingy about using such non-morally neutral expressions as “love,” “be kind,” “care deeply,” “right to make different choices” and “the best for him or her.” There can be little doubt that he is a moralist who is not timid about distinguishing between right and wrong.

Yet, the level on which he preaches is not the world where real love operates. It remains on the surface of human relationships, confined to the thin veneer of etiquette. We expect comedy from a sit-com, not moral insight. What we often get, however, is a form of propaganda that aims at reducing morality to etiquette. And what is etiquette other than the fine art of being nice?

“The greatest kindness one can render to any man,” St. Thomas Aquinas wrote, “consists in leading him to truth.” Would sophisticated modern society be able to endure such random acts of kindness? To love is to will and promote the real good of others. If we do not know what that good is, we cannot love. Love and kindness are not mere polite responses but revolutionary acts.

Love is transformational. Because of this, many find it terrifying. “Meeting the Gay In-Laws” (with its “nine simple rules”), and other like pieces that are posted on the Internet, invite us to exchange the Bible for the Book of Etiquette. But the former commands us truly to love one another, realistically and courageously, while the latter merely advises us to minimize the discomfort we might inflict on others during the social encounter. This is a worthy aim, but not a lofty one.

In addition, since the Bible enjoins us to love everyone, even Bill would remain in the loop. The worst thing we could say about being guilty of “religion-based homophobia” (if there is such a thing) is that one is guilty of a sin. Yet Christ commands us to love sinners. We would still have to love Bill and refrain from ridiculing him and exiling him in a social limbo. But what happens to the person who is, as T. S. Eliot once said, “fixed and formulated in a phrase”? Inevitably, he must be banished from “liberal” and “tolerant” society, to be discussed only as a museum piece that belongs permanently and irrevocably to the pre-enlightened, post-modern world.

We will not be saved or redeemed or reformed by etiquette, but only through love. And love is not what we learn from either sit-coms or politically correct Internet postings. The God of love is also a God of truth. Where there is no truth, love cannot take root. Love without truth, in fact, is no more reliable a guide to life than a TV sit-com.

Donald DeMarco is adjunct professor at Holy Apostles College & Seminary.