X-Men: the Last Stand and Today's world
- Login to post comments
May 7, 2009 - 13:18
I watched the movie X-Men: the Last Stand on Channel 5 last week. The story basically tells that the world has found a cure for mutants. But do they want to be cured?
I found it interesting since it brings many thoughts which are relevant to todays world. Yes, of course no mutant yet. But how about homosexuals? Recently in Singapore there some news coverage discussed about this topic of sexual education where some people felt that the Aware sex education programme promotes homosexual activities.
Read the news from StraitTimes
Don't you think the situation of homosexuals is similar to the mutants? Are they normal or natural? If there is a cure for homosexual tendency, what will happen? Will the parents want their children to be cured? Will the homosexuals themselves want to be cured? Or will there be a demand to accept these tendency as normal and natural?
Of course we know the Church teaching. We must not discriminate the homosexuals, we love the person. What the church cannot condone is the homosexual "activities". God has created sex for man and woman. In fact we can even see this from our "bodies". Men's bodies do not make sense by itself. Only when we see it in the light of women's bodies, we can understand the beautiful plan of God. In fact sex is about this differentation that makes things whole. For example, in a job application form, you will find a section asking about your "sex". We don't answer "never done it", we say either we are male or female.
Another interesting point about X-Men: the Last Stand is on the story about Jeane or the Phoenix. How she couldn't control her power and that caused her to kill the people that she loved. Prof Xavier asked her, will she control her power or her power control her.
I find too sometimes we see that in our lives. We are controlled by many things. Some of us we can't control our emotion, and we let our emotion control us. The effect is that we hurt people around us. Sometimes our past control us, and we behave unconsciously negative. And just like when Prof Xavier tried to help Jeane, she refused, she didn't want help and cure, sometimes we too like that.
Prejudice (prejudgment as its root) . Usually coming from a fear/ignorance of something/someone different. Be it race, religion, sex, sexual orientation or species (mutants), it has been around the longest of time. Often instead of rational thinking, sometimes emotions especialy fear rules over. This results in a period of oppression and sometimes even inquistion.
In the case of homosexuality, some believe it to be genetics (nature; which the Church does not support) while some others believe it to be caused by surroundings (nurture). I personally theorise that homosexuality is one of the effects of sin of Man (male and female). One of the chief causes would perhaps be the negligence of the covenant of marriage which breaks down the basic family unit. The once sacred bond between male and female, husband and wife, father and mother seem to so easily broken by the hedonism, relativism and sexual promiscuity of the modern world. And with no more attraction to attain marriage which was given to be good and holy, aberration appears.
And yet, like the body of Christ which was broken on the cross, the Church at times does seem to be imperfect. Human too have their imperfection. But we do love the Christ on the cross, the gift of the Church and others as well especially with their imperfection. Therefore being homosexual (which might seem to be imperfect) shouldn't be an excuse/barrier to not be accepted and loved. Regardless whether there is a "cure", one should not force the "cure" on the homosexual. Just as one doesn't force someone to change into what one perceive to be good and right. God gave all of us a free will but not to use it to force our will on others.
In the 2nd point which Oka mentioned, it reminds me of what Uncle Ben (the other Uncle Ben) said, "With great power, comes great responsibility". It's true as we have been given the gift of emotion from God and at the same time given the ability to have rational control over our emotions. Of course, it is not easy but with God's help we can. Indeed as one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit is Self-Control. And this I pray I have when I become a mutants with great powers.
Btw that X-men movie is not so good, I recommend X-men origins: Wolverine and on the topic of prejudice, I recommend the anime "Time of Eve" (which is on the prejudice of human-like Androids).
This is the very perfection of a man, to find out his own imperfections. - St. Augustine.