Homosexuality: A Mental Disorder?

[brianwalden]

I wish we could be at that point now but so many are afraid of there being a biological cause because then it would mean God did intend some people to be this way. (Attraction, that is, not the behavior.)

What problem would a discovery that homosexuality has biological origins cause? I think everyone agrees that some people are naturally born with a greater proclivity to sin than others. And everyone is naturally tempted to certain types of sin more than others. So why would it be so earth shattering if one day homosexual attraction was definitely proven to be biological?

People are born with all kinds of diseases and deformities which are much worse than a natural attraction to a certain type of sin. Yet no one accuses these of tripping up the Christian argument?

 

[blacktiger057]

I’m not homosexual and feel sorta weird being around people who are for understandable reasons, but that is no reason to treat them as the Church does today. God is in everyone, and the way some Christians treat people is a disgrace to this fact.

We must be empathetic about this subject. If you love someone, do you know what started it? You may say you loved their personality, beauty, etc., but however you try you won’t be able to fully describe why you fell in love with the person. It’s like that for homosexual people, too. They can’t help it. If they think they have found someone they truly love, then NO ONE has the right to take that love away.

What we do not understand, we fear.
What we fear, we destroy.

Lack of understanding about the subject has truly twisted the Church(us) in the way we treat these people. The way we treat homosexuals right now is only preventing peace and causing more harm than nessesary. I know that’s not God’s will at all.

 

[brianwalden]

Being a non religious type, I find after reading many of these religious forums on homosexuality it seems to me that the only choice involved here is someone “choosing” to believe in a imaginary, invisible man in the sky who is watching over the entire planet…or at least the relevant Christian parts of it.
You folks “choose” to believe in this. I don’t. You choose to do good things to ensure your place in heaven. I do good things because it feels good. It just feels right. For the record…my gay Christian friends and I have similar discussions. As for the procreation argument, I did my part back in the early '80’s as a registered sperm donor (some 40 offspring) supplying couples with “very high count” sperm when the husbands were not able to. Should they have been allowed to marry? My sister and her husband of 30 years are childless by choice. Should they have been allowed to marry?
I’m ranting…so I’ll leave now.

Why are you asking us what we think? You said yourself that the way you judge morality is by doing what feels right. You accept no authority but that of your own feelings. So what’s it matter what we think when you’ve already made up your mind based on what feels right to you? Whatever we say you’re going to argue that we’re wrong because it doesn’t agree with your version of what feels right.

 

[brianwalden]

I’m not homosexual and feel sorta weird being around people who are for understandable reasons, but that is no reason to treat them as the Church does today. God is in everyone, and the way some Christians treat people is a disgrace to this fact.

How does the Church treat homosexuals different from anyone else. It holds everyone up to the exact same standard: Sex is an act of selflessness, not selfishness, which must be performed within marriage and without contraception.

We must be empathetic about this subject. If you love someone, do you know what started it? You may say you loved their personality, beauty, etc., but however you try you won’t be able to fully describe why you fell in love with the person. It’s like that for homosexual people, too. They can’t help it. If they think they have found someone they truly love, then NO ONE has the right to take that love away.

I take it you’re not married. True love takes a lot of work, it’s not something you do because you can’t help it. True love works because the husband and wife put a lot of work into it. You’ll probably “fall in love” with several people in your life, but just as that’s no excuse for you to have sex outside of marriage neither is it for someone with a homosexual attraction.

What we do not understand, we fear.
What we fear, we destroy.

Lack of understanding about the subject has truly twisted the Church(us) in the way we treat these people. The way we treat homosexuals right now is only preventing peace and causing more harm than necessary. I know that’s not God’s will at all.

The Church is an expert in humanity. What doesn’t it understand? I agree that we need to treat homosexuals with dignity, but they also need to treat Christians with dignity in return. When I talk to my married friends about why they shouldn’t use contraception they usually don’t agree with me, but they also don’t call me a contraceptionphobe or accuse me of hating them. God’s will is for us to spread the Truth to everyone. We need to be charitable and word the message in a way that people will listen to it, but abandoning the truth altogether because certain people will only listen to is fluff and nonsense is certainly not God’s will.

 

[goofyjim]

As many have stated there is ample evidence of a biological cause for homosexual orientation. So someitmes I question why God or the Church would deny them the intimacy they desire. And the procreative arguments don’t work because there will always be heterosexual couples to do that.

 

[blacktiger057]

How does the Church treat homosexuals different from anyone else. It holds everyone up to the exact same standard: Sex is an act of selflessness, not selfishness, which must be performed within marriage and without contraception.

I take it you’re not married. True love takes a lot of work, it’s not something you do because you can’t help it. True love works because the husband and wife put a lot of work into it. You’ll probably “fall in love” with several people in your life, but just as that’s no excuse for you to have sex outside of marriage neither is it for someone with a homosexual attraction.

The Church is an expert in humanity. What doesn’t it understand? I agree that we need to treat homosexuals with dignity, but they also need to treat Christians with dignity in return. When I talk to my married friends about why they shouldn’t use contraception they usually don’t agree with me, but they also don’t call me a contraceptionphobe or accuse me of hating them. God’s will is for us to spread the Truth to everyone. We need to be charitable and word the message in a way that people will listen to it, but abandoning the truth altogether because certain people will only listen to is fluff and nonsense is certainly not God’s will.

The Church(us) does treat homosexuals differenetly. People on these forums have said awful things about this group of people. They aren’t represented equally in the Church. In some churches, they aren’t even allowed to be part of the church.

You don’t understand the matter of homosexuality fully, and therefore think it is absoutly wrong and against God’s will. But did you ever consider that two people of the same sex may actually have true love with one another in this lifetime, however odd it may seem to you? That is what many people fail to see.

Just because I’m not married does not mean that I don’t know anything about love and therefore you can disregard what I say.

 

[blacktiger057]

As many have stated there is ample evidence of a biological cause for homosexual orientation. So someitmes I question why God or the Church would deny them the intimacy they desire. And the procreative arguments don’t work because there will always be heterosexual couples to do that.

Did you know that our desire for the opposite sex is also a scientific inherited one?

 

[davidv]

As many have stated there is ample evidence of a biological cause for homosexual orientation. So someitmes I question why God or the Church would deny them the intimacy they desire. And the procreative arguments don’t work because there will always be heterosexual couples to do that.

There is basic fallacy in this.Homosexual acts will not provide them the intimacy they truely desire, and that is intimacy with God.

 

[blacktiger057]

There is basic fallacy in this.Homosexual acts will not provide them the intimacy they truely desire, and that is intimacy with God.

but they can help, just like a man-woman relationship can. If true love is present, then it will always help. When we love others, we love God.

 

[pprimeau1976]

Being a non religious type, I find after reading many of these religious forums on homosexuality it seems to me that the only choice involved here is someone “choosing” to believe in a imaginary, invisible man in the sky who is watching over the entire planet…or at least the relevant Christian parts of it.

Sorry you see it that way.

You folks “choose” to believe in this. I don’t. You choose to do good things to ensure your place in heaven.

You think that I “choose” to believe this? If a person is convinced that beliefs are consistent, true, and from God what other choice does he/she have? You make it sound as if religion is an item you buy at K-Mart. It is not.

I do good things because it feels good. It just feels right. For the record…my gay Christian friends and I have similar discussions.

I am not saying that feeling good is evil, but feeling good should not be the sole motivation for doing good things. The reason I say this is that “feelings” are by their nature subjective and in modern society, goodness changes from individual to individual. The idiots that murdered Matthew Shepherd thought that what they were doing was good, and it probably felt good to them. But, they did not do a good thing.

Fulton Sheen defined goodness as the degree to which an person or object performs according to the purpose for which it was made. I do not know if Matthew Shepherd was an active homosexual or not, but it is obvious that the men who killed him did not live up to their purpose.

As for the procreation argument, I did my part back in the early '80’s as a registered sperm donor (some 40 offspring) supplying couples with “very high count” sperm when the husbands were not able to. Should they have been allowed to marry?

Of course! If the Church was concerned about this as much as you paint it out to be, they would require people to have sex BEFORE marriage in order to proove that they should get married. But as you know, sex before marriage has always been considered sinful. Even with the advances of modern technology, they still do not require sperm counts and so forth.

My sister and her husband of 30 years are childless by choice. Should they have been allowed to marry?

If they told the priest when they got married that they both did not want children, or if they answered “no” when they were asked if they would accept children freely from God, then they should not have been allowed to marry.

I’m ranting…so I’ll leave now.

No one’s forcing you to leave and it’s okay to rant occasionally.

 

[goofyjim]

Did you know that our desire for the opposite sex is also a scientific inherited one?

Noone argues that premise for the majority. But there is a substantial minority who might inherit a desire for the same sex and they are told their only option is to live without intimacy. A person can become miserable when left with this. I say it’s time for Christianity to take a bold new step and forgive the sin of homosexuality in advance. Christ gave the apostles the power to do such but instead we retained the old rules from the Old Testament.

 

[blacktiger057]

If they told the priest when they got married that they both did not want children, or if they answered “no” when they were asked if they would accept children freely from God, then they should not have been allowed to marry.

Marriage is something to express true love for someone, not the privelege to have sex and make children with that person.

 

[goofyjim]

There is basic fallacy in this.Homosexual acts will not provide them the intimacy they truely desire, and that is intimacy with God.

Neither really does the marital heterosexual act if you want to look at it that way.

 

[blacktiger057]

I say it’s time for Christianity to take a bold new step and forgive the sin of homosexuality in advance. .

I say it’s time we stop looking at homosexuality as a sin.

 

[Brendan]

but they can help, just like a man-woman relationship can. If true love is present, then it will always help. When we love others, we love God.

You’ve got that backwards.

God is the source of all Love, we cannot truely Love others unless we first Love God.

Sure, you can go throught the motions and even experience an emotion.

But Love is not an emotion, it is the desire by the beloved for the loved to recieve the greatest Good.

One cannot, by defintion, Love someone in a homosexual way, as that denies them the greatest Good, Heaven.

One can experience emotional closeness with another, but outside of God’s plan, emotional closeness should never be confused with Love.

 

[goofyjim]

You’ve got that backwards.

God is the source of all Love, we cannot truely Love others unless we first Love God.

Sure, you can go throught the motions and even experience an emotion.

But Love is not an emotion, it is the desire by the beloved for the loved to recieve the greatest Good.

One cannot, by defintion, Love someone in a homosexual way, as that denies them the greatest Good, Heaven.

One can experience emotional closeness with another, but outside of God’s plan, emotional closeness should never be confused with Love.

I respectfully disagree.

 

[Brendan]

I say it’s time we stop looking at homosexuality as a sin.

Homosexuality itself is not a sin, but a moral disorder.

Homosexual ACTS are sinful.

We all have moral disorders, they are not sinful by themselves.

But giving into the temptation in a conscience act, THAT is when sin occurs.

 

[blacktiger057]

You’ve got that backwards.

God is the source of all Love, we cannot truely Love others unless we first Love God.

Sure, you can go throught the motions and even experience an emotion.

But Love is not an emotion, it is the desire by the beloved for the loved to recieve the greatest Good.

One cannot, by defintion, Love someone in a homosexual way, as that denies them the greatest Good, Heaven.

One can experience emotional closeness with another, but outside of God’s plan, emotional closeness should never be confused with Love.

Actually I think it’s more of a vice versa kinda thing. WHen we love others, we love God because everyone has God in them. When we love God, we love others because if we are truly in communion with him then we should start acting in his image.

No human can really describe love or why we feel love.

ANd you must consider this: Why can’t true love be experienced between two people fo the same gender? Just because you don’t understand doens’t mean that it isn’t so.

Sometimes the love of homosexuals is actually purer than that of a man and a woman, which usually turns into a divorce. I admit that some homosexuals are really sick and twisted, but that doesn’t mean all of them are.

And why does homosexuality deny heaven? If you are saying that anyone who has ever lived on this planet deserves eternal torture, then you are sick and I no longer wish to argue with you. You aren’t that kind of person, are you?

 

[blacktiger057]

Homosexuality itself is not a sin, but a moral disorder.

Homosexual ACTS are sinful.

We all have moral disorders, they are not sinful by themselves.

But giving into the temptation in a conscience act, THAT is when sin occurs.

Why are they sinful? That’s like saying sex between couples is sinful.

 

[Cristiano]

Why are they sinful? That’s like saying sex between couples is sinful.

Even sex between husband and wife is sinful when based on lust. (See Theology of the Body)