Being gay, lesbian, transgender

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Having a defective sexual desire, like anything else needs to be corrected. All of our defective tendencies, regardless of what they are, i.e. in food, drink etc, etc they need to be corrected. Hence the need for the practice of virtue to overcome them along with the great need of the supernatural order.

Our Lord did not come to preach a humanitarian gospel (that is the Masonic concept of life and religion - naturalism). We don’t need Christ to be ‘nice’. We need him to be in the state of Grace and get to heaven. . That is what this life is about. Without it, being in the state of grace, all of our natural actions are of no supernatural value or merit, and hence profit us nothing in the end.
 
Being born homosexual isn’t a sin. The sin is acting on the urges it presents.

As for being transgender, if you have a problem with knowing what sex you are, look at your body parts. They will tell you. You don’t get to be the sex you think you are without having surgery. And even then, you may not be as happy as you think you will be.
 
Who knows if there is some biological component to all this? Science hasn’t found proof of being born gay or lesbian.

I do believe, however, that it is not a choice, in the same way that my being extremely uncomfortable around men was not a choice after growing up in an alcoholic household and being molested as a child and teen.

I don’t think people choose to be gay or lesbian in the way they choose to lose weight or take up a hobby or choose a career. There are complexities of the brain and development of synaptic pathways that we can only intuit by making connections between the present and the past.

There are people – myself included – who have lived as a gay or lesbian person for years, but who now identify as completely heterosexual. To say “well they were just bisexual” or “well they just got it wrong” or “sexuality is fluid” flies in the face of either their (my) experience, or contradicts the born-that-way argument about sexuality.

I can’t explain how I went from being a lesbian (for ten years) to being a straight woman with no sexual inclination toward women. It came about over time, and here I am. Something inside of me healed somehow – that’s the only explanation I can give.

But my point is that it is hyper-simplified to say that people are “born that way” or that “it’s a choice.” There is far more going on than we are able to know with our current scope of knowledge.

Meanwhile, I gotta get to work.

Blessings!
 
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Supersam said:
Isn’t allowing him to be who he wants to be and be happy more important than him taking his own life. Now his parents have lost a son simply because he couldn’t live his life how he felt he wanted to
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First, please accept my condolences on the loss of this person you knew. Even though we as Catholics are to look at homosexuality as being disordered, there are many in the world who act without charity or kindness.

“Doesn’t God just want everyone to be happy?”

That requires a nuanced answer, and I could say Yes or No to that and keep on the right track, depending upon my angle. What God calls and wants us to be, first and foremost, is holy. Holiness is prior to happiness. Holiness should give is happiness, it’s the only way we can find the ultimate fulfillment of happiness, but in this world you and I still deal with attachment to sin, and it’s our attachment to sin which gets in the way of our finding happiness in being holy.

God is willing to meet us where we are in many cases, even to carry us the rest of the way to holiness and away from attachment to sin if we can’t do so on this life, but he doesn’t force us down that road. We need to try walking in the right direction, we need to take his hand and ask for help, even if we don’t get very far on our own.

It should be obvious that many people are not born in perfect health. There are various blood disorders, neurochemical imbalances, wiring issues, even the development of limbs can go wrong. We recognize that these are defects in physical health (but have no direct impact on spiritual health). Some people are born with predispositions to addiction, but this does not make it good to be a drunk, and we don’t encourage people to just drink and indulge because it’s what they want to do. These are just various examples that we should have no expectation that everyone is born perfect in every way.

A predisposition to a certain behavior doesn’t make pursuing that behavior morally good or neutral. As Christians, it should come as no surprise that we are asked to carry crosses, to deny ourselves, and that these crosses come in various shapes and forms. Jesus does not tell us put our cross down, so objecting “doesn’t God just want us to put our crosses down and be happy?” can’t hold. Instead he asks us to pick up our crosses and follow him.

As Catholics, we even consider the use of birth control and masturbation as immoral due to them disordering the sex act, which requires the complementarity of the sexes and total openness of the spouses to each other.

A same sex attraction is a disordered (but not immoral in itself) disposition, in that it’s an additional temptation to abuse our sexual faculties in a manner inconsistent with the ends they’re ordered towards. Acting on those attractions is a grave issue and is contrary to our ends as human beings.
 
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I think one needs to put things in their objective perspective here.

Being traumatized by an event will no doubt effect one’s judgment, but that doesn’t take away our choice or responsibility for good or bad.

Statement "Being gay is not a sin’ is misleading. - It is like saying ‘being a thief’ is not a sin, well, no - unless you actually steal, you will not be punished for your desire to steal, but if you already desire to steal, even though you don’t act upon it you still have to answer to God for it.

Our Lord points out the hard reality saying “But I say to you, that whosoever shall look on a woman to lust after her, hath already committed adultery with her in his heart.” - [Matthew 5:28] - Even if no physical act has taken place, the defective desire of the will needs to be corrected, otherwise, we will have to answer for the perverse desires of those tendencies.

Our defective tendencies are a choice not a compulsion of the will. We are all given enough grace that we need to overcome the evil tendencies we have if we so desire to make use of those graces.
 
cathapolo said:
Statement "Being gay is not a sin’ is misleading. - It is like saying ‘being a thief’ is not a sin, well, no - unless you actually steal, you will not be punished for your desire to steal, but if you already desire to steal, even though you don’t act upon it you still have to answer to God for it.

Our Lord points out the hard reality saying “But I say to you, that whosoever shall look on a woman to lust after her, hath already committed adultery with her in his heart.” - [Matthew 5:28] - Even if no physical act has taken place, the defective desire of the will needs to be corrected, otherwise, we will have to answer for the perverse desires of those tendencies.
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Concupiscence is not a sin itself. Neither are impulses or intrusive thoughts. Someone who is an alcoholic might never get rid of impulses or intrusive thoughts about drinking, but he can set his will against falling into drinking. Part of that would be to refrain from indulging fantasies about drinking, and fantasies are not intrusive thoughts.

There’s also many on this board who can’t differentiate between sexual desire and lust. Now, in the case of a man or woman with SSA, it is perhaps required even more so to tamp down on thoughts which, while not lustful, are disordered in who they’re targeted at, to better avoid the occasion of sin.

You are right about it not being only about the physical act. However, it’s important to differentiate between concupiscence (along with impulses and intrusive thoughts) and coveting, which is an act of the will even if no physical follow through occurs. And coveting is largely indulging in fantasies (imaginative and in desire) instead of dismissing them once one’s aware of where the mind is going.
 
Yes, that observation you make is correct. I just wanted to make it clear, that is all, nevertheless, for the sake of the others, I do thank you for taking the time to compliment my point for the sake of even greater clarity of the various readers. - As both clarity and charity, should go hand in hand 🙂
 
cathapolo said:
Statement "Being gay is not a sin’ is misleading. - It is like saying ‘being a thief’ is not a sin, well, no - unless you actually steal, you will not be punished for your desire to steal, but if you already desire to steal, even though you don’t act upon it you still have to answer to God for it.
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I have to comment on this again, as I feel this is a bad analogy. A person might be attracted to the same sex without desiring to act upon it, the same way a cleptomaniac might have impulses to take but no actual desire to steal. The direct comparison of someone with SSA to a thief or someone desiring to be a thief doesn’t work for this reason unless we assume the person is also willfully desiring to act on homosexual behavior.

But I appreciate the point you were working towards. We sometimes forget to comment on the ordering of our wills and speak only of our external actions.
 
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That’s assuming he created homosexual attractions. I’m born a lot of things, a birth defect being one of them…however God didn’t make me this way.

Even our personality has aspects that were shaped by situations we went through.
 
Yes, the circumstances we find ourselves in form much of who we are, but they within that reality there are choices that we do make and hence we are culpable for, even if we may not always grasp to what extent we have freely made those choices.
 
Not much evidence right now to conclusively say ssa is fully nurture or nature. Right now it points to both.

Ssa, birth defects, diseases etc are a result of a fallen nature. God didn’t ‘make us that way’. I hope, lol. We can be born with something that God didn’t make. Same reason why I think he doesn’t decide how your face, body, hair color etc look like, but people tend to disagree with me on this.
 
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To the OP I would say, be aware that it is not only God who is creating you. Society is also trying to shape and mold you or even push you to make your sexual preference the foundation of your identity as a person. You are SO much more than the particular sexual attraction you happen to be feeling at this phase of your life. Especially if you are young, I urge you to put all your life energy into developing the other parts of who you are, and make sure to deeply explore God‘s love for you.
 
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We all have disordered inclinations–it’s called concupiscence and is a result of our nature being wounded by original sin. Different people have different disordered inclinations, but we all have them and we are call called to “walk not according to the flesh, but according to the spirit” which has been regenerated in Baptism.

Concupiscence is not a sin, because it is not voluntary. Consent to it and voluntarily acting in accordance with it is what would be a sin.
 
We are all given crosses to bear.

Some people cannot marry because they simply never “find” a person of the opposite sex who is free to marry & “fits” with them.

Some people cannot marry because they are permanently, irreversibly impotent.

Gay, lesbian people fall into the first group as do many heterosexual people.

People who bear the cross of gender dysphoria, Transgender, etc. That is more complex and likely deserves it’s own thread.

I hope that your Diocese and/or parish has a Courage group!
 
I find other men attractive sometimes. But I have to remind myself that God made men attractive and vice versa. What do we do with our attraction? Do we automatically assume our attraction must mean we want to have sex with that person? Or did God make it so that we find his creation attractive regardless of gender, but use our sexuality for its correct purpose. If one feels they cannot have sexual relations with the opposite gender, maybe single life or a celibate same sex relationship is the
vocation one may be called to?
 
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