IF AN LGBT FINDS THE CATHOLIC LABEL MEANS NOTHING MUCH TO THEM THEN THEY SHOULD NOT TICK THE ROMAN CATHOLIC BOX IN THE CENSUS

Nothing is more obvious that the Catholic Church, in its Bible which it says is the word of God, its tradition which it says is also the word of God and which safeguards the traditional interpretation of the Bible and the whole aura forbids sex between two people of the same sex. Yet some insane people in the LGBT community cannot see it. It is wilful blindness.  I asserted that LGBT people who think the Church is false and who don't identify as members should be careful to put the truth down on the form and not tick the Roman Catholic box. The census is about giving information to the government to plan laws and policy and in principle that means respecting what Catholics want.  It is about asking the government to consider what people representative of the church want.  An LGBT person cannot speak for the church and is asking to be disregarded.  An argument along this line was printed in GCN Gay Community News.

In response I got this from a Matt.

MATT: "Gormley's claim that "to support the Catholic Church - actively or passively - is to damage the cause of gay rights", is just as negative as some of the Catholic hierarchy's assertions about the gay community."

Just as negative? There is no comparison between my alleged negativity towards the Church and its negativity towards gay people.

Matt cannot prove 100% that the Church is wrong about gay sex being a sin. What if he is wrong? Then he is damaging gay rights by supporting the Church.

Gay people do not want to stop Catholics marrying. The Catholic Church works hard against gay marriage. Catholics who support gay marriage actually gave up the right to when they got confirmed into the Catholic faith with its doctrines and mysteries. Being Catholic is implicit support for limiting wedlock to heterosexual magic. Explicit support is only for hypocrites.

Gay people do not issue propaganda against the Church. The Church in the form of the Irish Catholic, Papal Encyclicals, Alive? and Catholic Voice vents a lot of abuse against LGBT people and calls for many of their rights to be stripped away.

Gay people help suicidal Catholics. The Catholic Church does nothing to save gay men form suicide. It does not give us the approval we need.

Gay men commit suicide because their rights are opposed. Nobody commits suicide because they can't be part of the Catholic Church.

Christian marriage is not about love - a married couple who often hate each other is still expected to stay married. By implication, if marriage is not about love then homosexuality is even less about it.

Ask your priest if it is better for a gay person to go insane and commit suicide than to commit the serious sin of homosexuality. Ask him. He will reiterate the teaching of the Church that it is better to commit suicide through insanity for that way you cannot be damned in Hell forever for the suicide. You were unwell - it was not your fault.

LGBT are not religious fundamentalists. Catholics frequently are.

I could go on for a year.

To support the Church - actively or passively - is to damage the human right to truth and transparency. If you think the Church is merely human then you should not be in it. A God would you to worship him in the true religion. By adhering to the Church, Matt implies it is divine after all. That means he logically has to agree with its ban on homosexuality.

It is outrageous that somebody would support the Catholic Church and expect us to take him seriously as supportive of LGBT rights. He is not even truly supportive of Catholicism because he stands for disobedience to the head of the Church and knows that a Church full of disagreements and divisions over doctrine cannot stand. God said in Leviticus 20:13 that if a man lies with a man as with a woman it is an abomination - something to be greatly detested. The notion that this was a cultural taboo and not a sin is a ridiculous lie. Why would God single out that taboo for mention and approval? And if culture tells you to hate you don't have to actually hate but just act as if you do to fit in. Matt even regards the disobedience of Catholics who refuse to treat the homosexual as one who commits abominations as progress! Defiance is not progress unless its defiance that involves separation from the problem. Defiance can be a form of support in its own indirect way.

Matt's statement makes no sense. The Church would say that to support gay rights actively or passively is to damage the influence of the Church and undermine its teaching. But that is not negative but the truth. Thus to support the Church in any sense is implicit support for its essential teachings - one of which is that homosexuality is not just a sin but gravely sinful. Supporting gay rights is opposing an official doctrine of the Church and opposing the unity of the Church and to deny its alleged right to have standards of doctrine. Therefore to support the Church is to support that doctrine at least by implication.

By passive support, I meant merely allowing your name to be on the membership rolls and ticking the Catholic box. Active would refer to going to Church and/or paying the Church money for its support and promoting the faith of the Church as true and correct. Merely having the name on is saying, "Yes, I support Catholic teaching." If you don't believe in the teaching you are still saying that you support it. If I do not believe in it, this is not a sin as I am on a journey that I intend to end in belief". Paying money and going to Mass are giving stronger support. Without passive and/or active support there would be no Church. So such support does at least damage LGBT rights by taking at least an implicit stance against them.

Matt would have you support the Catholic Church at least by letting yourself be counted as one in the form. He pretends there is nothing in the slightest wrong with this. Yet he would hold that there is something amiss for example if you let yourself at least in name only be a member of the Communist Party.

What do I mean by damaging? Damaging can start with by implying that the Church has a right to be homophobic and that is done by joining the Church or keeping one's name on the membership rolls. It is implying approval or at least support. Going to Mass and the sacraments and paying money to the Church imply this even more strongly. If the Church had no members it would have no audience for its homophobia and no system with which to spread it. It wouldn't have people to set belief standards for. In other words, with no members, there would be no teaching that one is obligated to believe that homosexuality is wrong.

Merely being a member is taking a share in the responsibility for the harm it has done to LGBT people.

How dare you refuse to admit that mere membership of an anti-LGBT teaching body is inconsistent with support for gay rights. It compares to a Catholic saying their membership of the Church does not imply that they think there should be a pope at all!

And some of the hierarchy may say negative things about the gay community. We are not to take comfort from the fact that others do not. They are still members and representatives of an anti-LGBT ideology. They might not express their negativity and bigotry but it is still there.

There is no comparison between what members of the hierarchy say about LGBT people and how dangerous LGBT rights are and my assertion that to support the Church even by allowing your name to remain on its membership books is inconsistent with support for gay rights. You say one is as negative as the other. There is nothing aggressive or nasty about having the name removed for the sake of principle one believes in namely LGBT rights. It does nobody any harm. The same cannot be said about what the Church teaches about LGBT people. Matt what you wrote is just vicious and pro-Church and anti-gay. You have no respect for my position when you feel the need to make it look as narrow and negative and therefore nasty as the anti-LGBT statements of the Church. The implication is that those LGBT people who have suffered horribly due to the teaching of the Church should get a life!

Catholicism cannot be trusted when it claims to love the sinner despite finding the sin disgusting and repulsive and hateful. It has a record of lying. Let us prove this. The Church has even started saying that to say that the homosexual desire is a disorder is not to say that homosexuals have a disorder! Or that homosexuality is a disorder but homosexuals are not disordered. This is gross hypocrisy and it is only spouted to save the Church from recriminations for preaching hate. If homosexuality is a sickness or a disorder, then homosexuals are sick. End of. Sin is more personal than sickness. A sickness happens to you but a sin is something you cause to happen. Therefore if sin is evil then the sinner is evil. The sin cannot be separated from the sinner. If having a sickness means you are sick then how much more does having a sin mean that you are sinful, that the sin is your bad character or bad nature? The loving God of Catholicism is an idol for he is a lie. To adore him is to adore what you want God to be while not giving a toss about what he is.