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.