Something tells me the average LGBT event isn’t exactly friendly to chastity.
Depends. If you go to the club events, absolutely not. If you go to the festivals, they’re quite clean and just celebrate LGBT culture and the dignity of the human person. Parades tend to gather the extremes of both, though only the club extreme is shown on the media.
Now, what I don’t get is why you insist on promoting the inclination towards a sin. I understand it’s not sinful unless acted upon, but why would you identify yourself based on this? For instance, I’m inclined towards sloth and pride, but I’m not offended when someone says those are disordered inclinations. In fact, I’m quite grateful for, for instance, anti-laziness messages, as these items help me overcome my sins.
I identify very heavily with my SSAs. It’s not because I believe I should act on them, but rather because they are the single biggest struggle I will go through in my entire life, and they are a lifetime struggle. In addition, by identifying with my SSAs, I am able to help kids (and by kids I mean high schoolers and college kids) who struggle with SSAs to realize that their sexual orientation isn’t the end-all-be-all of life. It also keeps me up-to-date on these kids, many of whom have horrible parenting.
But their right to exist goes without saying, particularly by we in the Church who affirm the dignity of every human person from conception until natural death. That is far different than proclaiming our demands that the world acknowledge our private lives (whether or not you believe homosexuality is sinful) and accept if not affirm them.
The problem is that you believe this rosy view of what Catholics believe. My friend lives in a small town of about 1,000 people, where 1/3 of the town is Catholic and 1/3 Baptist. The “Catholics” join the Baptists in denouncing gay people as less-than-human and not deserving of being on this Earth. Is this what the Church teaches? Absolutely not. But to make the case that people recognize the right of gay people to EXIST is a very rosy outlook indeed, especially when considering hardcore religions like the Southern Baptists, Pentecostals, Muslims, and Mormons.
I think Holyrood posted something that was also my experience, in that homosexuals have been part of humanity for as long as history has been recorded, if not before. For the most part no one cared, and partly because few knew or had a need to know about someone’s private lives.
In saying this, I believe homosexuals like everyone else have the same constitutional rights as I do. Thus the unfortunate persecution, raiding of “gay bars” and other harassment was and still is inexcusable. I believe in free speech (other than the few exceptions…yelling fire in a crowded theater) and if gays want to parade that is their right. But make no mistake about it, this isn’t a parade against the thought police but a parade to proclaim a particular sexual activity as their self identification.
I say to gay and Lesbian persons, you are so much more than what you do with your genitalia. Why the focus on such a confining label?
Lisa
Honestly, I think that the gay “propaganda” movement actually doesn’t do that much. I’ve only met one person in my entire life who had a parent that espoused proper Catholic teaching who did any homosexual behavior in their life, and she’s straight and merely tried it out once. I would actually propose the idea that the entire reason most gay people act on their inclinations is their parents.
Most of the people I met either had laissez faire parents or (the majority of the time) had parents that were so ruthlessly harsh that they scared their childen. My friend works at a summer camp and doesn’t advertise her sexuality, but of course the other counselors talk about it and the 8th graders at camp overhear. She’ll have, every year, one or two kids come up to her and talk about how upset they are that they’re gay, and that they want to talk to her about it because their “parents will kill them.”
Now let me ask you something. Is that the fault of my lesbian friend, or is that the fault of the parents of these children who provide such an antagonistic home for their children that they can’t be open about their struggles? The most intolerant, antagonistic, don’t-disagree-with-me gay people I’ve ever met had parents who treated them like absolute dirt as kids for their SSAs. Their hearts are hardened to our message not through any gay ‘propaganda’ but through the horrible parenting job of their parents.
To be honest, we need to be worried more about how the Church can get INVOLVED with stuff like the “It Gets Better Project” to make it more Catholic-oriented, not ban the only recourse many of these kids have to feel like suicide isn’t their only option.
In closing, let me quote you a pro-SS’M’ song, and I question you as to why we don’t see lines like these in our Catholic newspapers, only anger towards gay people:
“If I was gay, I would think hip-hop hates me
Have you read the YouTube comments lately?
“Man, that’s gay” gets dropped on the daily
We become so numb to what we’re saying
A culture founded from oppression
Yet we don’t have acceptance for 'em
Call each other f*****s behind the keys of a message board
A word rooted in hate, yet our genre still ignores it
Gay is synonymous with the lesser”
“When kids are walking 'round the hallway plagued by pain in their heart
A world so hateful some would rather die than be who they are”
“No law is gonna change us
We have to change us
Whatever God you believe in
We come from the same one
Strip away the fear
Underneath it’s all the same love
About time that we raised up”
~ Same Love by Macklemore