A reader writes:
I feel like I know you, having listened to you on EWTN many times. I have a question for you, if you’d indulge me.
I am Catholic, my wife Protestant. We were married within the Catholic Church, and God bless my wife, she has done a great job in helping to raise them Catholic. (She always goes to Mass, is very supportive of their education within the Catholic schools, etc. etc.). The kids are between 7 and 14 years old.
My wife’s sister is lesbian, and is now undergoing artifical insemmination so that she can conceive a child. We’ve never broached the subject of her lesbianism with the kids, but with the potential addition of a "cousin", I have no idea what or what I shouldn’t say to the kids.
My gut reaction is to be brutally honest, but I think they would come out hating their Aunt (which would indirectly hurt my wife).
My wife feels the same as I do regarding the fact that both homosexuality and artificial insemmination are morally wrong, but she feels guilty because she also "can’t be there" for her sister as she attempts to go through pregnancy.
I’ve always kept my sister-in-law at arms length, in the sense that we don’t visit her at her home, although we do visit together at public places (restaurants, etc), or in my in-laws home.
I also don’t have any idea of how I’ll handle this new "niece" or "nephew" if it comes to pass; I don’t want to penalize the child for the mistakes of the mother, but I feel this articifial insemmination is an abomination.
This is a very difficult situation, and I feel for you.
It also is your sister-in-law who has created the situation. Your wife therefore should not feel guilty about the limitations that the situation creates for her ability to "be there" for your sister-in-law. The situation is of your sister-in-law’s designing, and she is the one responsible for the difficulties that ensue.
The question is: What practical steps need to be taken in a situation like this. Ideally, if possible, one would want to dissuade the sister-in-law from undertaking this course of action, though that may be impossible at this stage for any number of reasons.
If she goes through with the procedure and has a child then you would want to do several things:
- Continue to do your best to love her (i.e., will her good and do what you can to encourage her good), for she continues to be a woman who God loves and for whom Christ died.
- Love the child she gives birth to (i.e., will the child’s good and do what you can to encourage the child’s good), for the same reasons.
- Love your own children (i.e., will and encourage their good) for the same reasons *AND* for the reason that you have an obligation under divine law to care for them and promote their good.
All though all of these parties are equal in God’s eyes, your responsibility is strongest toward your children. Promoting their good is therefore your primary obligation. It therefore is not "penalizing the child" if you determine that certain measures must be taken to protect your own children. You can will and promote the good of all the children involved (your sister-in-law’s child included) as best you can; the situation may simply limit what can be done due to the needs of your own children.
What measures you may need to take is judgment call that you and your wife will have to make based on your knowledge of your own children, what they are ready for, and what they can handle. They are obviously old enough that something will need to be said to them, but they are not so old that they are clearly ready to hear all the facts. Which children are ready for what is something you would know much better than I since children are so different (and especially when you’ve got an age range like 7 to 14, which might turn into 8 to 16 by the time the child is born, depending on how quickly your sister-in-law becomes pregnant).
That being said, it does not seem to me that you necessarily need to bring up the subjects of either lesbianism or artificial insemination.
It seems to me that it may be possible to simply say "Aunt So-and-So is having a baby even though she is not married." You can then explain that it is wrong for her to do this–that it is God’s will that all babies be born in families with a mother and father who love them–but that even though this is wrong Aunt So-and-So and her child are both people that God loves and that we must love them and do our best to help them, too. (E.g., by praying for them.)
That may be all you need to say. If the children ask who the father of her baby is, you can say (truthfully) that you don’t know. (And omit the fact that Aunt So-and-So doesn’t know either.)
Stressing the love aspect is important, both for now and because it
will help the children when they finally do learn the truth of the
situation. You will have framed it in terms of God’s love all along, and that may make it easier for them to keep the reality in proper perspective.
I’d also have a talk with your sister-in-law, explain what you are going to tell the children, and ask that she *and her partner* respect your decision by not giving them more information than you feel they are ready for. For example, if one of the kids were to ask her who the father of the baby is, you would want her to say something like "I’d rather not go into that. Let’s talk about something else." Similarly, you’d like your sister-in-law to present the baby to your children as "my child" not "our (I and my partner’s) child."
If she does agree, it is likely to be several years (and your kids would thus
be older) before the situation would have to be further clarified. (Also, you and your wife should be the ones doing the clarifying; not your sister-in-law, her partner, or her child).
If she and her partner don’t agree to that I would then reluctantly conclude that her access to your children must become even more further limited than it is.
Again, I’m sorry to hear about your situation, but I hope this helps.
20
Wow. that’s a tough one.
I honestly don’t know how parents are able to filter out the world today, and only present things to their kids as they feel they’re able to emotionally and cognatively handle them.
Especially when schools are working against parents and removing parents’ rights to filter the world for their children as they see fit.
I’m on the younger side still and will push through the 30 barrier this year. In remembering back I understood who homosexuals were and what they did from around the age of 9 or so. What has changed is that there weren’t homosexual characters (obvious ones anyway) on TV yet.
Sad to say, but it may be true that the writer’s children are very aware of the current sexual trends. I would:
1.) Try to get a handle of what they understand of sexual situations. Even something as simple as asking them if they’ve heard the words “gay” or “homosexual” and if they know what those mean. I would ask this separately because of the wide variance of age.
2.) You should now have a general idea of their current level of cultural indoctrination now. Based on those answers frame an explanation of the current situation using the outline in the above article.
Chiming in with Nick above, the writer’s children, especially if they attend public school, may know quite a bit. I’m 21, and schoolchildren were calling eachother “gay” when I was 8, and I had a pretty good idea of what that really meant by the time I was 10. There is so much more knowledge about homosexuality in today’s culture, that I wouldn’t be surprised if the writer’s children might even have wondered about their aunt already.
I went all the way through school with a girl in my class (small school, she was in my class every year) who was a child of the identical situation. She had “two mothers” and no father. I spent thirteen years in school with her and we’re still acquaintances. I can’t ever remember when I found out that she was the product of artificial insemination, maybe around grade six… but I knew earlier than that that she had two moms. I remember in grade one making fathers day cards and she was asking the teacher what she should do instead since she didn’t have a daddy. I had never reflected on it much, but now that I think about it, she came over to my house a few times to play but I never once went to her house. I assume that was my parents doing now that I think about it.