Why is the West losing Christians?

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Review this thread. It’s right here.

And the reason it is removed is because the definition of a mental disorder is something that fundamentally affects somebody’s ability to manage their lives. The chief reason homosexuals have had such a problem in the past is because the stigma attached to it. Not only that, it was frequently very unevenly applied. If you were of wealthy or aristocratic background, people overlooked the fact that you were gay, or at best, it was more a game of whispers. If you were working or middle class, then suddenly you were declared mentally diseased.

I think the last thirty or forty years of reducing the stigmas and persecution of homosexuals has demonstrated pretty amply that, where society and the law aren’t attacking them and forcing them to pretend they’re something they’re not, they can be as productive and as well self-managed as any other member of society. So why is it exactly you would want them relisted as being mentally ill, if not because you wish to assure that your brand of Christianity, with the socially conservative elements attached to it, once gain is the guiding force of Western civilization? Like I said, I think what bothers social conservatives is the loss of influence, their own beliefs and prejudices are no longer in sync with the wider society.
 
niceatheist said:
So why is it exactly you would want them relisted as being mentally ill, if not because you wish to assure that your brand of Christianity
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Well I note that this is not an argument or explanation but an assumption.

You ask me to play devil’s advocate so here goes. I believe I read one of the main (secular) doctors involved in the changing of the designation spoke about the change mainly coming from political considerations.

I remember reading his comments that in his experience with homosexual patients they were quite often associated with sexual and relational disfunctions.

Certainly the ‘purpose’ of sexuality is primarily to reproduce. That is a point that is not restricted to religion and so it would be quite normal from that viewpoint to categorise homosexuality as disordered.

I see no obvious Christian campaign to influence DSM to reverse their decision nor am I aware of of any original campaign to influence that organisation on religious principles.
 
niceatheist said:
I have had people tell me that. They seem to imagine that being an atheist means being some sort of nihilistic self-deifier.
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Either that or “money* is your god”.

*substitute “money” with any hobby, interest, or object.
 
You understand that this “purpose” is not one that has ever been universally accepted. It remains a fundamentally Catholic position, but notions around sexuality began to diverge even during the Reformation. A lot of people have sex, and have had sex, for pleasure.

I’m not even talking about a campaign to have homosexuality relisted, but the DSM change is frequently one that comes up in these discussions. The subtext is that gays could be still considered as perverts, which is apparently right and proper, if it weren’t for all those nasty psychologists.

I’ll be blunt. Homosexuality is not a mental illness. Gay people, when not subjected to stigma and persecution, seem quite capable of conducting their own affairs. So it begs the question. If homosexuals historically had more mental health issues than heterosexuals, was it the homosexuality or society’s treatment of homosexuals that lead to those mental illnesses.
 
One of the reasons that things get classified as mental disorders is because people go to psychologists and psychiatrists in search of treatment. Whether it is depression or OCD or ADHD or severe anxiety, they are having trouble functioning at school or at their job or at home with their family and they seek relief by seeking treatment. But since most gay men and lesbians don’t have problems functioning and don’t seek treatment any more, it’s difficult to justify classifying homosexuality as a mental illness like they used to. So, I agree with you that it’s not a mental illness.
 
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Doctors, meaning psychiatrists, were the people you went to with any problem relating to mental health, including homosexuality. Those doctors, at the time, had decades of experience dealing with homosexual persons. It’s as if none of their writing survived the 1950s and 1960s. Which is false. So if the police or private citizens read these accounts, what were they supposed to think? That these doctors were not doing their best?

Charges of conspiracy occur when people don’t know why radical gay activists like Frank Kameny and those with him, got into the APA’s annual convention using fake badges to confront members. There was also the East Coast Homophile Organization (ECHO) which most people know nothing about. I learned about gay people at a young age. I had no desire to bother anyone. But here’s what happened: ‘Finally, on December 15, 1973, the American Psychiatric Association declared47that homosexuality was not a mental disorder, therefore, “‘curing’ us all, instantaneously, enmasse, in one fell swoop, by semantics and by vote, instead of by therapy,” as Kameny wrote in a letter to the Mattachine Society.’

Another group people have never heard of. So, who decided homosexuality was disordered? Certainly not the public. We heard what qualified people were telling us.
 
Ed, that is misleading article. It doesn’t state that this is a count of baptized Catholics, and not those that self-identify as Catholics. Someone reading that article, especially someone not familiar with how the Statistical Yearbook calculates its numbers, will be deceived into thinking that it’s 1.3 billion self-identified Catholics.
 
A Catholic is Catholic by virtue of baptism. If I, for example, self-identified as a Protestant, that doesn’t make one. Since the Vatican presented this figure, I trust them.
 
Why is it that you seem so keen to have gay people deemed mentally ill? Do you imagine there’s a “treatment”?
 
Back in the 1950’s, “qualified people” were still performing lobotomies on patients. Back in the 1930’s and 1940’s, many “qualified people” still believed in eugenics and sterilized thousands of people, especially unwed mothers, homosexuals, alcoholics, etc. to protect the gene pool. Lobotomies were performed on those kinds of people, too. So, I don’t always put much stock in “qualified people” in the mental health field.
 
I’m not keen on anything but presenting factual information. To set the record straight. To tell both sides of the story. The fact is there are two types of gay people: those who believe there sexual activity is normal, with no need to fix it, and those who follow Church teaching and live a celibate life. Which is not to say they stop being gay. “Sex for pleasure,” and casual sex are horrible burdens - slavery to the flesh.
 
Of course not, you are more interested in painting emotional pictures and ignoring any evidence to the contrary.
 
edwest211 said:
A Catholic is Catholic by virtue of baptism. If I, for example, self-identified as a Protestant, that doesn’t make one. Since the Vatican presented this figure, I trust them.
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  1. If you see an article saying that a particular political party has X members, you would rightly believe that they have X members who state they are part of that party. Why? Because that’s how language works. Imagine though a third of them have declared that they are no longer with that party, yet the party still said there were X members. You would state they were being deceptive, trying to make it look like they had more members than they do (counting people who would shout from the mountaintops that they weren’t with that party anymore).
  2. The point of this thread is to try and determine why there are less Christians in the West per capita than there used to be. Among that 1.3 billion that the Statistical Yearbook reference a percentage of those are former Christians, people we’re talking about. To quote that article as a way to show that the West isn’t losing Christians is ignoring the problem.
 
I think you’re heavily overstating your case, with a considerable lack of evidence. The fact is that homosexuality does not fit any modern notion of mental illness. Homosexuals can manage their affairs, can lead reasonably productive self-managed lives, providing there aren’t people waiting around every corner to harass them and throw them in jail.
 
The things I just described are more than just “emotional pictures.” They’re also facts. The history of how people were treated who were considered to be “mentally ill” is pretty atrocious and a lot of people in the mental health field were often motivated by prejudice as much as science.
 
In the end, the psychological community decided on more rigorous definitions of mental illness; and not just simply being “different” in some way from the majority. Where homosexuals do not face legal and social persecution, they appear quite capable of managing their own affairs and being productive citizens. In other words, other than the fact that they are attracted to members of their own gender, they exhibit no significant psychological issues. So far as I’m concerned, the case is closed, and even the Church seems to have taken a much softer line, so I wonder how some of the posters feel their continued desire to stigmatize homosexuals directly (or via questioning the removal of homosexuality from the DSM) fits with the Church’s own teachings on the treatment of those with “SSA”. Do they think it is the height of Christian charity to basically want to condemn every homosexual as mentally disturbed, placing them in the same category as schizophrenics and sociopaths?
 
niceatheist said:
You understand that this “purpose” is not one that has ever been universally accepted.
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Whether it is universally accepted or not is beside the point. It is a reason to designate homosexuality as disordered without reference to Christianity which is what you asked for.
niceatheist said:
I’m not even talking about a campaign to have homosexuality relisted, but the DSM change is frequently one that comes up in these discussions.
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You originally brought up homosexuality with me to give examples of Christians ‘up in arms’ and obsessed with a loss of influence as part of a wider discussion.

What happens on these discussion boards with some people does not represent Christianity being obsessed and ‘up in arms’ with respect.

Homosexuality like most topics is far ranging and complex.
 
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The preaching of a very lukewarm Gospel. Not enough focus on sin, repentance and depending on God’s grace. That and the scandal of many in the church hierarchy.
 
A consequence of deep wounds and a absence of love, manifests itself to having SSA. If you don’t get a gay ‘gene’ then it is your environment that dictates it. So yes a disordered manifestation of an attraction is still an issue though they may be ‘perfectly fine’ in other areas.
 
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