Children Are Pawns in Catholic School Rift

Re “Enrollment of Gays’ Sons Roils O.C. Catholic School” (Jan. 2): My heart is saddened at the stance a group of parents has taken against a gay family at St. John the Baptist School regarding the enrollment of their sons. They have taken the teachings of Jesus out of context to justify their own narrow views. We need to love one another, not judge one another.

Grace Prine

Cerritos

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I am Catholic and it is disturbing to read about parents threatening to pull their children from their Catholic school because of the enrollment of two boys adopted by a gay couple. These boys are being used as pawns to further their parents’ agenda? I don’t know the fathers, but the only agenda I see is that they want their sons to have a good Catholic education. If anyone would be using their children as pawns, it would be the parents who take their children out of the school because of their own bias and intolerance.

Maureen Discipulo

Redondo Beach

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The parents concerned that their children will be in a Catholic school with the sons of two gay men need to reread the Gospels. Where in Jesus’ teaching does he even mention sexual orientation? What if they only want to look to Catholic teaching? Shouldn’t they then demand that every parent with children in that school be against capital punishment, the violence of an unjust war, the selfish use of natural resources to the detriment of the common good? Central to the Gospels is Christ’s embrace of the poor and the marginalized. The cruelty demonstrated by those petition-signing parents doesn’t jibe with my reading of Christ’s message.

Peg Langhans

Long Beach