Catholic Insinuations about Gay Men
The Vatican opposed a United Nations declaration that tried to strike down laws
punishing gay sex. The motive was the Vatican's concern that "control
mechanisms according to which, norms (not only legal, but also relative to the
life of social and religious groups) that do not place each sexual orientation
on the same level, would be considered contrary to respect for human rights."
So the Church was willing to let gay people be executed and imprisoned for being
gay just in case the Church would end up being found guilty of discrimination
for opposing same sex marriage and gay adoption and same sex civil partnerships.
It was afraid it might have to censor the homophobic hate speech in the Bible
and the writings of the Church Fathers. The Church has no disciplinary
procedure in place for Catholic authors who do go too far against LGBT people.
Persecution is permitted.
Catholic Church on gay sex - sodomy.
The Catholic Church teaches that sex should be between a man and woman in a
valid marriage.
The Church teaches that sodomy - anal sex - is a deviance. It's a perversion. It's
using the body in a way it was not intended.
The use of the Bible as something to be respected in Catholic services is
homophobic for despite the law of God condemning the sex act of a man lying with
a man as a woman Paul wrote, !What shall we say, then? Is the law sinful?
Certainly not! Nevertheless, I would not have known what sin was had it not been
for the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had
not said, You shall not covet" (Romans 7:7 NIV). It is felt that as Paul
says the moral law is written on every heart he is not thinking merely of wrong
as wrong but as religiously wrong or wrong in the sight of God. For Paul,
immorality can be a secular concept and sin is describing how immorality is seen
as a sin by God. Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers interprets it thus,
"Strictly, I did not know. I had no acquaintance with sin except through the
Law. Before the introduction of law, acts that are sinful in themselves,
objectively viewed, may be done, but they are not sinful with reference to the
person who does them. He has no knowledge or consciousness of what sin is until
it is revealed to him by law."
The Church teaches that sodomy is the misuse of the other person and is
therefore about violence and not love. It may be mild violence but still
violence.
Sodomy is two people degrading one another.
Sodomy is so gravely wrong because it is people using each other as objects of
sexual gratification.
If they pretend it is an act of love their sin is worse not better. How grave then
must it be to encourage them!
If a man and wife always use sodomy instead of penis in the vagina, their
marriage will never become real or valid.
The Church says that sodomy is clearly wrong in everybody's eyes even if they
will not admit it. It is against natural law. The Church believes that if you are
gay with a clear conscience you are still a bad person. You are still a person
doing wrong. You won't get a reward from God for doing good that is really evil.
The Church regards the existence of people who are gay with a clear conscience
as hypothetical and that it is impossible in the real world. The Church holds
that natural law condemns homosexuality and that natural law is written on the
heart and reason. So if anybody holds that homosexuality is right or acceptable
it is because they have managed to distort their conscience which is a sin. So
nobody in Catholic dogma can hold that homosexuality is ever allowable or that
anybody can really believe it should be allowable. The Church and society don't
make excuses for people who believe that a killer of prostitutes did right -
they class such people as evil. They say that it is their belief in evil that it
is good that precisely makes them evil. The Church finds it impossible to hold
that a person who says they hold that homosexuality is good sometimes or all the
time is a good person.
The Church says that sodomy when engaged in freely is a grave sin and if
unrepented, the partners in sodomy will be condemned to Hell for all eternity.
They will suffer everlasting punishment.
The Christian Church holds that a person in a state of grave sin cannot do any
good work pleasing to God. That is because they won't reconcile with God meaning
they do their goodness in a spirit of independence from him. Indeed, to do good
like this hardens the heart. It is easier to reject obvious evil like hatred and
murder than to reject evil that looks caring.
A person who is holy and who has done objective wrong without knowing it will
learn it at the judgement and have to apologise to God. Damage has still been
done and so the just and fair God can't overlook it. The Church says that
homosexuality is still wrong even if, hypothetically, a person can engage in it
without believing that it is sinful. The homosexual will be judged by the Church
as bad regardless of his intentions.
Implications
It is hard to see how the Church could approve if a bisexual person marries a
straight person. If somebody can't have sex with the same sex without being a
sweet talking manipulator then it is silly to say they are not users if they
marry the opposite sex and have sex. If you are a user then it doesn't matter
what sex you sleep with. You will be using the members of the opposite sex and
the same sex if you have sex with both. The Church should teach that if a person
has any trace of bisexuality or is gay that person must sleep with nobody at all
until he or she develops 100% heterosexuality.
Christians say that to love the sinner is to hate the sin and vice versa. Hate
the sin and love the sinner means we must judge the sinner fairly and condemn
sin when we see it. To not condemn the sin and to refuse to judge it is to hate
the sinner. Surely then the more sin we see in a person the better. Why? If
hating the sin is another way of loving the sinner as the Church says, then the
more you see a person as a sinner the more you love them. Even if you mistakenly
think they are worse than they are that is brilliant. That the Church does not
draw this conclusion is proof that it knows fine well that to hate the sin is to
want to maliciously hurt the sinner.
When somebody does wrong to you maliciously, you want to hurt that person back.
You hate the sinner and the sin. You see that the distinction between sinner and
sin is a distinction without a difference. The sinner is the sin in the sense
that sin shows what kind of person the sinner is. Christianity says you must
hate the sin but love the sinner which really means, "Hate the sinner but
pretend you don't". You feel personal about the sin. You cannot want to hurt a
sin but only a sinner.
He who hates your sin hates you in so far as you are to blame for the sin - sin
shows the kind of person you are so to hate the sin is to hate the sinner. Hate
and love can co-exist but religion has no right to deny that hating sin means
hating the sinner at least to a degree. The Church incites hatred against gay
people.
The teaching that we must hate the bad behaviour of people and hate the contempt
with which they view the ways of God but love them is a strange one. People
always say, "Free yourself from those who hurt you by forgiving them so that you
may enjoy peace." That attitude contradicts the alleged obligation to hate evil
and disobedience to God. How? It urges us to be free from hating others and
holding grudges but urges us to suffer a great stress and dislike over our sins
and those of others.
If you hate evil, it will upset you gravely to see somebody doing wrong. If you
love the evildoer, you will have the added burden of detesting the suffering
they bring on themselves. They could be in danger of going to the Catholic hell
which burns for all eternity. It is a mistake to think the Church teaches that
we should enjoy seeing somebody punished. God does it but only because it is
right and he does not like doing it.
To regard the Church as supernatural removes the right to a reality check - the
supernatural does not make sense to us from our perspective and we cannot
understand it meaning any magical doctrine or claim can be true so belief in the
supernatural indicates that it is possible that homosexuality is immoral for it is
very unlucky. The Church teaches that God, like the state, may make laws that
seem to many to make little sense, because he knows things we don't and sees the
long term consequences and knows the future.
The Church teaches that the state should punish sin - the state can punish what
it wants, all legal systems are imperfect and may be too light on certain crimes
and harsh on others - meaning it teaches the state has the right to enforce
God's law against homosexuality.
In a democracy, if most of the people want things done a certain way that is the
way they should be done. If a state is made up of mostly conservative Catholics,
then they have the right to see to it that the state outlaws homosexuality for
example on pain of incarceration in jail. Whoever does anything that encourages
religious belief is helping the religion to get power. That was how religion got
into a position to take away civil liberties and it can and will again.
Church cannot change to suit everybody. So why should it change to suit your
ideas of gay and lesbian rights? Do you want it to start allowing gay marriage?
Why should it do what you want and why should it not listen to gay and lesbians
who feel that marriage itself is nonsense and outmoded and do what they want?
To be listed as a member of the Church is to support the Church. You might not
support it financially or by going to Church but you are giving the Church
minimal support.