It is a hot-button issue, but really, society in general is obsessed with it because there’s an entitlement portion to it that people are blindly magnetized to.
I wonder what the situation is like in Orthodox-majority countries. Hopefully they’re standing resolute as well…
I can’t speak to your personal experience, Tigg. I speak to mine, and that is that I see Catholics referring to gay people as perverts and sodomites, and even if the latter is a technically accurate term, we all know it’s a terrible pastoral approach. We don’t go around calling people fornicators and masturbators, even though the prevalence of each is probably much greater than the prevalence of gay people.
Oh please!Sometimes as our world moves forward in the area of human rights, there are those who want to hold on to the myth that the world is the same as it was 50, 150 or 1500 years ago. When gay people began breaking out of their personal closets it frightened many good and loving people.
Undoubtedly, many, perhaps most, persons who experience SSA hold (at least outwardly) to that view. I can understand how difficult it would be for them to confront an alternative view.
Many men also masturbate and what you call “the seed” isn’t “delivered” anywhere special then either. Using your logic, we’d have to assume that all these men must also feel “deep down” somehow that masturbation is “disordered” since their semen isn’t used for reproduction. But to be honest, before I came to CAF, I’d never even given this issue of what happens to the semen or what should happen to it a second thought. I was never raised to believe that masturbation is wrong or sinful or disordered and it just seemed like a perfectly normal and healthy thing for a young man to do in moderation. I don’t think that you can assume that all men think very deeply most of time about whether “the act” is or should be always congruent with reproduction.
In the theological sense, masturbation, is also disordered, though less obviously so IMHO. But when one chooses a life partner for a sexual relationship, the issue I’ve outlined arises - the choice of partner is inconsistent with the nature of the act.Many men also masturbate and what you call “the seed” isn’t “delivered” anywhere special then either. Using your logic, we’d have to assume that all these men must also feel “deep down” somehow that masturbation is “disordered” since their semen isn’t used for reproduction. But to be honest, before I came to CAF, I’d never even given this issue of what happens to the semen or what should happen to it a second thought. I was never raised to believe that masturbation is wrong or sinful or disordered and it just seemed like a perfectly normal and healthy thing for a young man to do in moderation. I don’t think that you can assume that all men think very deeply most of time about whether “the act” is or should be always congruent with reproduction.
Thanks for responding as I do read your posts and respect them. I am in complete agreement that many well-meaning posters are greatly lacking in finesse. I may be guilty of that at times. Zeal is good - being a zealot - NOT! I do not, however, question their love of the faith and the need to defend it. May the good Lord please help us all do a better job.
No doubt about this and the gay left has identified the way to rouse their fire in the question over rights and sexual freedom. So much noise over this that I pray the gay Catholics will still hear the unpopular and quieter moral voice of the church and recognize the conflict that is being stirred for political gain.
I hope so too. We can only do so much, and not all of the burden is on us. Some people don’t want to hear the truth no matter how charitably you convey it. We just have to make our best effort, and leave the rest to God.
The right wing also uses wedge issues to stir people up (many of them poor or middle class) so that they vote against their own economic self interests and mostly benefit wealthy people and corporations.
Indeed. Fear and loathing aimed at single person or an entire group certainly causes varied psychological problems for those targeted as well as those in the mainstream group . Thank goodness that ten years from now this will not be an issue.Oh please!
This is so patronizing, demeaning, and really, just outright silly.
Maybe instead of patronizingly dismissing people as good and loving but ‘frightened,’ you should realize that there are moral, spiritual, and physical problems linked to homosexuality.
Homosexual victimization is a subset of identity politics which in turn is a subset of political wedge issues. Yes, the right leverages wedge issues, but the scope of this conversation is not about every wedge issue, it’s about this one in particular.The right wing also uses wedge issues to stir people up (many of them poor or middle class) so that they vote against their own economic self interests and mostly benefit wealthy people and corporations.
The problem is the political noise is on both sides. On one side you have ultra right Christian fundamentalists who valorize the nuclear family and marriage to an almost idolatry level. Then you have leftist activists (especially prominent in secular culture) who have open hostility towards Christianity which is inevitably followed by an extreme over reaction by some Christians. Thus the pendulum continues to swing back and forth. So unfortunately the Catholic position in the middle never actually gets addressed. Instead, its “you must hate gays if you don’t support ‘gay marriage’” versus “we must protect the nuclear family against those facist godless gays mentality”. Neither side is interested in charity, they just want to win the culture war, and if that war has any collateral damage, neither extreme side has shown that they care. Unfortunately they are often the most vocal and prominently seen positions too.
I have never met a single liberal group who felt the need to antagonize, villainize, or incite violence against gay people. And while there are certainly non-Christian groups that go after gay people (take the death penalty in some Islamic countries, for an example), anti-gay hatred is an almost-exclusively conservative Christian phenomenon in the United States, when discussing organized levels.
The misbehaviour of some “conservative Christians” is not disputed.
The thing I’m really confused about is the arbitrary emotional wording. ALL people who are against SSM must automatically be that way because of hate? There are no other reasons? Same sex acts are automatically not debatable in any other terms? Any criticism from any corner is automatically rejected?
This is a perception issue. The media is always looking for the extremist position, regardless of the issue. And how big is each side, really? Who’s going to watch peaceful protests on TV? The media wants us to see both sides yelling at each other. They want that. Not people just standing and praying.
But Ed, groups are rarely called homophobic for their views on SSM. It is only when they are ignorant and bigoted towards gay people as a whole that they get called out on. I am so tired of the strident defenders of the FRC virulently calling criticism of them as based on their opposition to gay marriage. It isn’t. They are homophobic because they believe gay people worship pedophiles and go on national television telling people that they need to fear gay people being around their kids.
I don’t see this as the case. Hope to hear more about how you came to this conclusion.