When “Progress” Loses Its Spell: Euthanasia and LGBT Ideology Beyond the Overton Window

For decades, debates over sexuality and the end of life have been framed as settled in advance, leaving many with the sense that Western societies would not merely change, but steadily accelerate away from the moral framework of Christian civilization. In both areas, moral change has been presented as moving in a single, predictable direction—what is often described as the steady widening of the Overton window. Dissent, when it appears, is treated as a temporary delay rather than a genuine challenge. Yet recent developments suggest that this presumed moral trajectory is no longer holding. In both sexual ideology and euthanasia, reality itself is beginning to resist the script of inevitability.

Two recent articles—one by Fr. Shenan J. Boquet on euthanasia in Europe, the other by Brandon Goldman on shifting attitudes toward LGBT ideology in the United States—address different subjects, in different countries, and from different angles. Read together, they point to the same underlying phenomenon: areas long assumed to be moving inexorably “forward” are instead showing signs of hesitation, reversal, or fracture—driven not primarily by religious argument or political conservatism, but by concrete social and human consequences that no longer align with the promised narrative of progress.

The Pause on Euthanasia

Writing about the French Senate’s recent rejection of a bill legalizing assisted suicide and euthanasia, Fr. Boquet notes how unexpected the vote was. The legislation had already passed the lower house, and many assumed it would continue smoothly through the legislative process. Instead, senators stripped the bill of its “death-on-demand” provisions and, strikingly, moved immediately to pass legislation expanding access to palliative care.

This sequence matters. It reveals that the debate is no longer framed simply as progress versus resistance. Increasingly, legislators are recognizing that the push for euthanasia rests on a false dichotomy: either we accept pain, indignity, and abandonment at the end of life, or we normalize killing as a form of care.

What has begun to undermine that narrative is experience. As Fr. Boquet observes, countries that legalized euthanasia in the name of compassion are now producing a steady stream of disturbing cases—patients euthanized after withdrawing consent, decisions rushed under bureaucratic pressure, and vague standards of “unbearable suffering” that quietly absorb social, economic, and relational burdens. Caregiver exhaustion, rather than prompting greater support, becomes a justification for death. Related developments surrounding assisted suicide have grown even more disturbing, as Fr. Boquet notes elsewhere in his discussion of proposals, such as AI-assisted suicide for couples.

These are no longer hypothetical concerns. They are documented outcomes which have made it increasingly difficult to maintain the claim that euthanasia is simply the humane and inevitable next step.

A Parallel Reassessment of American Sexual Politics

A similar interruption is visible in a very different domain. Brandon Goldman, responding to a New York Times opinion piece lamenting that “Americans are turning against gay people,” argues that the Times misreads what is happening—especially among younger Americans.

Survey data still shows widespread support for a “live and let live” approach to personal life. What has declined is not basic tolerance, but confidence in an increasingly demanding ideological framework that has attached itself to sexual politics. What was once presented as coexistence has evolved into a comprehensive moral regime, complete with speech norms, institutional enforcement, and far-reaching claims about the nature of the human person.

This resistance becomes visible in concrete controversies, such as debates surrounding the transgender movement in women’s athletics, where abstract claims about identity collide with embodied realities and long-standing social practices. In such cases, attempts to redefine basic categories do not remain theoretical but raise questions about fairness, safety, and the limits of ideological abstraction. Attempts to set aside long-established truths can prove self-defeating and, at times, even dangerous.

Young people under 25 years of age, Goldman argues, are not rejecting individuals so much as resisting a system that presents itself as morally compulsory and beyond debate. This resistance is not merely negative or reactive. It is accompanied, particularly among younger men, by a renewed search for meaning, coherence, and transcendence.

Recent data suggest that Generation Z now exhibits higher levels of religious practice than older cohorts, reversing long-standing trends, and anecdotal evidence from universities and parishes points to a notable increase in conversions to Christianity, especially among men in their twenties. In a cultural environment saturated with ideological messaging—across entertainment, education, and professional life—many young people appear less interested in perpetual transgression than in recovering the true, the good, and the beautiful. What draws them is not nostalgia, but the intuition that reality, order, and moral seriousness offer something more durable than endless moral experimentation.

The Common Pattern: Moral Fatigue with False Binaries

Read together, these two debates reveal a common pattern. In both cases, progressive moral claims were framed as inevitable, and dissent as temporary or pathological. Yet in each instance, reality has begun to reassert itself.

At stake here is a deeper epistemological divide. Classical thought understands truth as adaequatio intellectus ad rem—the conformity of the mind to reality. Ideology, by contrast, reverses this relationship, seeking an adaequatio rei ad intellectum—the reshaping of reality to fit a preconceived moral or conceptual scheme. What both debates reveal is that lived reality is proving more resilient than the theories imposed upon it. Bodies, suffering, dependence, sexual difference, and generational bonds stubbornly resist abstraction. When ideology collides with lived experience, it is ideology—not reality—that begins to fracture.

Euthanasia was sold as compassion, yet increasingly pressures the vulnerable to justify their continued existence. Sexual ideology was sold as tolerance, yet has expanded into a cultural system that demands affirmation and punishes dissent. In each case, what people are resisting is not care or respect, but coercion masked as moral progress.

This helps explain why a “third path” is reappearing in both conversations. In France, it takes the form of renewed attention to palliative care—accompaniment without killing. In the United States, it appears as a renewed interest in limits, meaning, and traditions once dismissed as obsolete.

Here the Church’s long-standing anthropological insight quietly re-enters the public square—not only in debates over euthanasia, but also in questions of sex, family, and social belonging. A moral vision that treats autonomy as absolute and dependence as failure will eventually collapse under the weight of real human vulnerability.

Against both the logic of assisted death and the logic of radical self-definition, the Church insists that the human person is received before he is chosen, embodied before he is expressive, and relational before he is autonomous. Human dignity is not preserved by eliminating weakness or redefining nature, but by accompanying one another in families, communities, and forms of life ordered toward care, fidelity, and generational continuity.

Not a Victory—But a Moment

None of this amounts to a decisive reversal. The French euthanasia bill may yet return. Cultural reassessment among the young may harden into resentment rather than renewal. Moral fatigue does not automatically produce moral clarity.

However, something important has changed. Ideas once presented as inevitable are now being judged by their fruits. The question increasingly asked is no longer, “Is this progressive?” but, “Does this actually serve the human person and society?”

As Fr. Boquet aptly observes, “For Catholics committed to orthodox moral teaching, these developments are both a cause for cautious hope and a call to deeper engagement.” This is not a moment for retreat or self-congratulation, but for renewed clarity and presence. Fr. Boquet continues:

In a culture grappling with questions of suffering, autonomy, and dignity, Catholics must continue to be voices for life, sharing the richness of Catholic teachings far and wide. If the tide is indeed turning, it is because these truths resonate with our deepest human instincts: to protect the weak, to accompany the suffering, and to honor the dignity of every person from the first breath to the natural end ordained by God.

One has only to reread The Clash of Orthodoxies by Robert George to see that, a quarter of a century after its publication, the appeal to reason and moral realism championed by Pope John Paul II in Fides et Ratio is quietly having the last word. Even so, for Christians this moment is not an occasion for triumphalism, but for witness.

When ideology falters, reality reasserts itself. Reality—fragile, relational, embodied—has always been the ground on which the Church speaks most convincingly.

Photo by Colin Lloyd on Unsplash