Why do some Catholics support "Gay Marriage"

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Because they don’t understand the proper definition of marriage.
 
Because he who is without sin must throw the first stone. It’s not so much support as it is tolerance.
 
Because people confuse tolerance with love. ‘To truly love someone I must support them in everything they do.’

Plus they underestimate the importance of the issue. ‘Its not murder, it’s just two people getting ‘married’, I don’t care.’
 
Various reasons.

What is needed?

What St. Paul calls renewal of the mind:

vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/homilies/2009/documents/hf_ben-xvi_hom_20090628_chius-anno-paolino_en.html

Excerpt:

We become new if we let ourselves be grasped and shaped by the new Man, Jesus Christ. He is the new Man par excellence. In him the new human existence became reality and we can truly become new if we deliver ourselves into his hands and let ourselves be moulded by him.

Paul makes this process of “recasting” even clearer by saying that we become new if we transform our way of thinking. What has been introduced here with “way of thinking” is the Greek term “nous”. It is a complex word. It may be translated as “spirit”, “sentiments”, “reason”, and precisely, also by “way of thinking”. Thus our reason must become new. This surprises us. We might have expected instead that this would have concerned some attitude: what we should change in our behaviour. But no: renewal must go to the very core. Our way of looking at the world, of understanding reality all our thought must change from its foundations. The reasoning of the former person, the common way of thinking is usually directed to possession, well-being, influence, success, fame and so forth. Yet in this way its scope is too limited. Thus, in the final analysis, one’s “self” remains the centre of the world. We must learn to think more profoundly. St Paul tells us what this means in the second part of the sentence: it is necessary to learn to understand God’s will, so that it may shape our own will. This is in order that we ourselves may desire what God desires, because we recognize that what God wants is the beautiful and the good. It is therefore a question of a turning point in our fundamental spiritual orientation. God must enter into the horizon of our thought: what he wants and the way in which he conceived of the world and of me. We must learn to share in the thinking and the will of Jesus Christ. It is then that we will be new people in whom a new world emerges.

~Pope Benedict XVI
 
More from the link:

Rather, courage is needed to adhere to the Church’s faith, even if this contradicts the “logic” of the contemporary world. This is the non-conformism of faith which Paul calls an “adult faith”. It is the faith that he desires. On the other hand, he describes chasing the winds and trends of the time as infantile. Thus, being committed to the inviolability of human life from its first instant, thereby radically opposing the principle of violence also precisely in the defence of the most defenceless human creatures is part of an adult faith. It is part of an adult faith to recognize marriage between a man and a woman for the whole of life as the Creator’s ordering, newly re-established by Christ. Adult faith does not let itself be carried about here and there by any trend. It opposes the winds of fashion. It knows that these winds are not the breath of the Holy Spirit; it knows that the Spirit of God is expressed and manifested in communion with Jesus Christ. However, here too Paul does not stop at saying “no”, but rather leads us to the great “yes”. He describes the mature, truly adult faith positively with the words: “speaking the truth in love” (cf. Eph 4: 15). The new way of thinking, given to us by faith, is first and foremost a turning towards the truth. The power of evil is falsehood. The power of faith, the power of God, is the truth. The truth about the world and about ourselves becomes visible when we look to God. And God makes himself visible to us in the Face of Jesus Christ.

~ Pope Benedict XVI
 
Zoltan_Cobalt said:
Because they don’t understand the proper definition of marriage.
Click to expand...
This is an interesting sentiment. In what sense is Catholicism’s definition of “marriage” the proper one?

It wasn’t the first; marriage had always been used to pool families’ wealth and secure political alliances before, during, and after the advent of Christianity.

It isn’t the most popular conception of marriage; there are at least as many polygamists as Catholics, for example, and tons of secularists.

It hasn’t even been completely consistent; annulments were invented when people realized that eternally-binding marriages were inconvenient.

So by what criterion is it the best definition?
 
Oreoracle said:
This is an interesting sentiment. In what sense is Catholicism’s definition of “marriage” the proper one?

It wasn’t the first; marriage had always been used to pool families’ wealth and secure political alliances before, during, and after the advent of Christianity.

It isn’t the most popular conception of marriage; there are at least as many polygamists as Catholics, for example, and tons of secularists.

It hasn’t even been completely consistent; annulments were invented when people realized that eternally-binding marriages were inconvenient.

So by what criterion is it the best definition?
Click to expand...
I hope you realize that it is the first definition of marriage, going all the way back to the first ever human beings. Marriage has always been one man, one woman.
 
Because they believe they are being “compassionate”.
And…as others have said, they really don’t know WHAT the church teaches or WHY.
Peace.
 
I’ve seen it a lot from people with a gay relative or gay friends, and I get the impression that gay people think they are not loved unless their entire lifestyle is completely approved of. So anyways the gays tell their relatives that they were born gay, and this constitutes “proof” because if the Catholic disagrees, then it is considered not accepting the gay person. Then comes the “reasoning” that if they were born that way, God wants them that way, so why not let them get married. It’s a load of moral relativistic malarkey, of course.
 
Thorns said:
I hope you realize that it is the first definition of marriage, going all the way back to the first ever human beings. Marriage has always been one man, one woman.
Click to expand...
Recorded history goes back to a little past 4000 B.C. We have documents from a variety of nations and cultures that refer to marriages millennia ago, and they aren’t Christian. Christian marriage didn’t exist until the founding of the Church.
 
Oreoracle said:
Recorded history goes back to a little past 4000 B.C. We have documents from a variety of nations and cultures that refer to marriages millennia ago, and they aren’t Christian. Christian marriage didn’t exist until the founding of the Church.
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“Christian marriage” (which is Marriage) began with the first man and first woman. Our Church just reaffirms this universal truth.
 
Thorns said:
“Christian marriage” (which is Marriage) began with the first man and first woman. Our Church just reaffirms this universal truth.
Click to expand...
Then prove it. Produce the oldest document that records a Christian marriage. We’ll see how it compares to other, non-Christian marriages.

Of course, there is no such document. You’re just taking it on faith that such marriages existed. But the fact is that Christians borrowed the concept of marriage from other cultures, just like they borrowed Christmas from the Pagans’ Winter Solstice (same time of year, feasts, meeting with family, exchanging of presents, evergreen trees, etc.).
 
I am just asking why some Catholics support “gay Marriage” not when marriage first occurred.
 
Oreoracle said:
This is an interesting sentiment. In what sense is Catholicism’s definition of “marriage” the proper one?

It wasn’t the first; marriage had always been used to pool families’ wealth and secure political alliances before, during, and after the advent of Christianity.

It isn’t the most popular conception of marriage; there are at least as many polygamists as Catholics, for example, and tons of secularists.

It hasn’t even been completely consistent; annulments were invented when people realized that eternally-binding marriages were inconvenient.

So by what criterion is it the best definition?
Click to expand...
The question was regarding Catholics supporting it. So therefore its about the Catholic Church’s definition of marriage - that is God’s definition, not Atheists or the Government.

Since you’re inquiring, here’s a start regarding what the Church teaches about marriage from the Catechism…
vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p2s2c3a7.htm
ARTICLE 7
THE SACRAMENT OF MATRIMONY

1601 “The matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life, is by its nature ordered toward the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring; this covenant between baptized persons has been raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a sacrament.”

I agree with the point that most of them have because they have a relative or friend who is gay. That way that person knows their loved if the Catholic doesn’t agree with the Church. As others have mentioned, I’ll underscore it …the Catholic that does this doesn’t understand what the Church teaches and most important why!

Here’s what the Church teaches regarding homosexuality…
vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p3s2c2a6.htm

Chastity and homosexuality

2357 Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity,141 tradition has always declared that "homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered."142 They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.

2358 The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God’s will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.

2359 Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.
 
Well, I’m opposed to same-sex “marriage”, but I don’t feel very strongly about the issue here in the US, because I think that the whole idea of civil “marriage” is blasphemous. I agree with the Canon XII of Session XXIV of the Council of Trent as well as Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors that marriage (at least for Christians) is an ecclesiastical matter, not a civil one. Other religions ought to regulate their own marriages, not the state, and so I don’t really feel that strongly about what civil “marriage” is defined as.

Obviously, if it has to exist, it should be at least be brought into line with Church teachings, and so I oppose same-sex “marriage” on this account.

Benedicat Deus,
Latinitas
 
As I have heard it explained, because we live in a secular society, religious objections based on God’s plan for marriage or that of the Church should not regulate the lives of those who do not believe in God or belong to His Church. Similar to the objections Christians would have if they were forced to live under Sharia law.
 
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