Threading the needle on LGBT issues

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Yes, although the I’m married so this doesn’t really apply to me. But I do accept the church’s teaching on same sex acts.
 
It’s rough when you live with parents, I agree. I think I may have finally got around to mentioning it to my mom when she was about 87 years old.
My mom spent some years working in San Francisco in the 50s and had all kinds of gay friends and drag friends and nudist friends and a woman who made unwanted overtures to her before she was married, but Mom also had a gift for just ignoring stuff she did not want to have to see or deal with.
 
Some of the things the gay rights movement want are legit and things I think the Church could agree with. Down here being fired or assaulted for being gay is still a real fear. And yeah, I think a lot of what we’re seeing now is indiscriminate backlash.
 
jtavington said:
I identify as bisexual because that’s the proper word for having attraction to both sexes and because I grew up in a very conservative home. My family still doesn’t know, and I have to grit my teeth when they make certain comments. It helps to be able to say “yes, this is part of who I am.” It also helps in discussion of some things to be able to explain something as someone who identifies as both LGBT and a faithful Catholic.
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I know how you feel. I had to put up with comments from some of my relatives, too.

My grandmother belonged to Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority and I still remember reading mailers that she got from him in the early 1980s. The letters usually had a separate sealed envelope on the inside with red writing on the outside warning that it contained shocking information and should be kept away from children. Among the things inside were some fairly tame photos, including one with two men kissing, with the warning, “For adults only: please do not let these photos fall into the hands of innocent impressionable children.” And the letters said inflammatory things such as, “Please remember, homosexuals don’t reproduce! They recruit! And they are out after my children and your children.” And then at the end of the letters, there was a little box that could be checked off which said:

"( ) Yes, I want to join you in your crusade to stop the militant homosexuals from gaining power in America and becoming a bonafide minority, with special privileges. Enclosed is my special gift to help you launch a Homosexual Counterattack of national education. Enclosed is:

( ) $100 ( ) $50 ( ) $25 ( ) $____"

After reading this stuff, I’m sure that my grandmother believed that all gay men are sexual predators out trying to “recruit” children.
 
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That’s roughly the milieu I grew up in. Catholicism’s relatively more restrained request to avoid sex outside of marriage and the cultivation of lust and to confess when I failed was a relief.
 
I agree. I’m grateful that I grew up Catholic and had that instilled in me. I can only imagine the amount of self-hate I would have had, had I grown up in a denomination that really disliked homosexuality(people and acts).
 
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LittleFlower378 said:
You are not bi sexual, you are a child of God. Having unwanted thoughts, or being tempted to same sex acts or desires doesn’t mean you are bisexual, you are being tempted like all of us.
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Having attractions to people is not a “temptation”. When heterosexual people find a person of the opposite sex attractive, it is not considered a “temptation” or an “unwanted thought”. Granted, attractions can grow beyond this into temptations, but of themselves, they are just a normal part of human sexuality.

When a person describes themselves as “bisexual” it is just a way of observing that they find both sexes attractive.

This does not make the person any less a child of God. Would you say “you are not heterosexual, you are a child of God”? They are not mutually exclusive!

Your post relegates such attractions as automatically “unwanted”, which is a classic approach taken by most heterosexual people.
 
guanophore said:
Having attractions to people is not a “temptation”. When heterosexual people find a person of the opposite sex attractive, it is not considered a “temptation” or an “unwanted thought”. Granted, attractions can grow beyond this into temptations, but of themselves, they are just a normal part of human sexuality.
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Absolutely. When you’re like me, and you go around just finding guys attractive all your life, it’s far too much WORK to summon up some sort of moral opposition or worry to the experience. In some abstract way, I’d prefer not to be attracted to men, but in the moment, it’s just, “Whatever, he’s cute.” The moment of attraction hardly ever involves a temptation towards a lustful thought like, “I wish I could get in bed with him.”
 
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I do believe there’s been at least one scientific test implying most (identifying as heterosexual) women actually can be attracted to both.
 
If you are finding someone of the same sex attractive in a sexual way it is disordered, something not natural. We have to stop playing homosexuality as something normal, it is not, it is a sin.
 
well it’s not like we asked to be attracted to members of the same sex. I wish that I could be exclusively attracted to the opposite sex, truly!
 
You have a free will. Decide and will to be attracted to people of the opposite sex.
 
It doesn’t work like that. It really, really doesn’t. The best we can do–what we are commanded to do-- is to refrain from acting on attractions in ways that would be sinful. This goes for both heterosexual and homosexual attraction.
 
Overcoming sin isn’t easy. You have fallen into a bad habit, a vice.

I struggle too, after being addicted pornography 20 years ago, even though I don’t watch it anymore, I stiol can have a difficult time looking at a woman as a whole person, not just a body to be used.
 
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You are acting if you are consenting to being attracted to a person of the same sex.
 
Planning on it. I value never, ever having this conversation with them. They took my conversion to Catholicism hard enough as it was.
 
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