Facts, not flattery, about same-sex attraction

Marty said ...
> It is also clear that God commands his people to not judge > anyone else.

Anyone??? Careful, Marty, you’re treading into apparently unfamiliar theological territory. Overt sinful behaviour is always to be judged. Yes, we are all sinners; the difference among us is that some are forgiven. But where there is no repentance, there is no forgiveness. Continual sin (such as same-sex practice, as one example) without repentance, as if it was not sinful, differentiates some sinners from others.

Jesus came to seek and to save the lost - “the immoral, the prostitutes and ... the homosexuals” - to lead them out of their sin and into eternal life. Christians who follow Him are told to love the sinner, but to hate the sin.

Just as the alcoholic deals with his problem by abstaining, so too should the individual with same-sex attraction.

It is reasonable to believe that a hormonal imbalance is behind rape, pedophilia, homosexuality and promiscous heterosexuality
Strange how we have no problem in giving women and girls hormonal pills, shots, implants etc. in order to keep them from getting pregnant...or aborting it if they do become pregnant...but when it comes to homosexuality, or pedophilia we don’t even consider anti-androgenous medication to stop the spread of pervertion

Whether it has a biological basis be it hormonal or inborn is a moot point.  This will anger some, but there could be a biological basis as to why rape happens, but we do what we can to prevent them from becoming rapists or punish them if they do rape regardless of whether they’re born that way.  Rapists don’t choose their feelings.

Even if sexual proclivity doesn’t change it’s best to change them to either straight missionary sex or celibacy.  Homo & lesbian activities are medically bad.  Sodomy & oral sex are medically bad.  You know that we must abolish sex change surgeries. 

Why is it judgmental to be against homo&lesbian;activities? End those sexual activities.

I agree that the attraction should be worked on… otherwise the person is left to battle this by themself.  All of us are sinners...but yet scripture tells us that if we see our brother/sister sinning and do not try to correct them, then we are also guilty of THEIR sin.  So not judging means not playing God… by condemning someone to hell or pronouncing them a saint
Either judgement is wrong...even the Church which tests “spirits” and declares people SAINTS...never declares that any individual is in hell.  However, we have to make judgements..otherwise we would never buy an umbrella or summer clothes etc.  We have to make a day by day judgements on what to wear according to the weather and other factors.  All sexual sin is mortal… but like suicide vs murder… a murderer can repent and do penance, but a person (if they are in full control of their mind) who kills themself cannot repent or do penance, except through a miracle of the Mercy of God, which is available to all ... but we would sin by presumption..if we say “I can kill myself and God’s Mercy will still save me” I can say that I love homosexuals, prostitutes, murderers, child molesters etc
becausse I do believe that “there but for the Grace of God go I” That is why I try to be OPEN TO THE GRACE OF GOD..by avoiding the NEAR OCCASSION OF SIN… going to the Sacraments and praying for myself and for others.  If someone tells me they are homosexual and they want my opinion, I will tell them the statistics on an early death, an unhappy life, and the many awful diseases they and their partner can contract.. also the pain that it causes their family members and the scandal given to others...especially the young.  I would point out what scripture says about it and why the Church condemns it..
but I would assure them that I will help them in any way I can and that I will always love them and pray for them.

I would like to correct my earlier post. By definition, a sin is a disorder so SSA is already a sin. Even if one doesn’t intend to act on it, one’s object of attraction should be avoided and run away from in order to be chaste.

Homosexuality is an abomination and ought to be condemned and it all starts with attraction. Attraction leads to acts so the attraction should be corrected and cured in therapy before one acts on it. We condemn the sin not the sinner.

It is also clear that God commands his people to not judge anyone else. It is also clear that Jesus came for the poor, the immoral, the prostitutes and we can assume, the homosexuals. To love them, and show them love. Jesus also commands his people to follow in Christ’s footsteps.

Can any of the people who commented say truthfully that they follow in Christ’s footsteps and truly loves homosexuals, and protitutes and the poor? Without judgement?

Until you do, then you are a sinner like the people you condemn, and you can expect to meet them in the same hell you condemn them to.

“All things NOT being equal...” When a husband and father dies
the wife (widow) and mother can have the satisfaction of knowing that she has lost the man who fathered her children and died while still functioning as their father and her husband...hopefully faithful and a good role model for the children.  A husband and father who abandons his wife and children to pursue his selfish fulfilments elsewhere, leaves behind him WRECKAGE...The wife is questioning her femininity and the children blame themselves in different ways… feeling they just weren’t good enough to keep Daddy at home… “Maybe if I had been a boy”.... “I’m not like him… not man enough for him to hang out with” etc. etc. and many other destructive “messages” in trying to figure out how he could have left.. (visitation isn’t the same as having your Dad and Mother living under the same roof as you...and siblings) So for those women (or men) who find themselves abandoned...and raising children… it is a real struggle and the community and Church really needs to get more involved in “filling in the blanks” as much as possible.  Those whose spouses have died and left them raising children also need outside help, relatives, friends and Church...but it isn’t as tough as being “abandoned” Those who are single parents by choice have made a bad choice, unless they “found” themselves pregnant and it was a case of “do or die"… This is still hard...but abortion
produces not just a dead baby, but a dead conscience, unless repentance and conversion take place.  Those who choose to have TWO MOMMIES or TWO DADDIES… produce more complications for their children.  Children wonder about what is going on in the bedroom… and they are also exposed to the social circles of those who practice and promote lifestyles that for the guys will shorten their lives and produce many extra STDs...for the gals.. there is the domestic violence and lack of “modeling roles” for the children....and promiscuity with STDs specific to their behaviors… then there is still the social stigma which will always be there from other kids at school

Marty,

What do you mean by “embrace the diversity of gender”?  You did notice from my earlier points that I’m a man, and a married father at that, right?  Don’t make the bigot’s mistake of assuming that anyone who disagrees with your bigotry does so out of immediate self-interest.  Some of us are willing to accept the world in ALL its diversity, and that includes those whose orientation we don’t happen to share.

So you DON’T have the intellectual integrity to demand the forcible removal of children from single parent families.  Thought you wouldn’t.  You’re content to pontificate about the “evils” of homosexuality but don’t have the guts to do anything - or even ADVOCATE doing anything - about it.

As regards the weary old “children brought up in single parent families are DOOMED” argument, well, that kind of depends on the family, doesn’t it?  I was brought up in a two-parent household, my dad was (and is) a great guy and I was lucky to have him around.  My wife was raised by her mother alone; her dad, while not a bad person, pretty much sucked at being a father and kept his distance from quite early in my wife’s life, and all agree that it was much for the better that he did.

By YOUR standards, it would have been better if my wife had never been born.

Do kids need a father and a mother?  Depends on the father and mother in question. 

Can a child be raised well by two dads or two moms?  Depends on the dads and moms in question.

But the idea that the sheer fact of being raised by a straight couple guarantees a happy life is nonsense.

And I’d ask you to consider this:  For a gay couple of either gender to have or adopt a child is a very difficult and complicated process, legally, medically (sometimes), socially (thanks to the likes of you)… A gay couple only become parents if they REALLY want to.

Heterosexuals, on the other hand, can and often DO reproduce casually, accidentally and carelessly.

Now I’ll acknowledge that simply wanting to be a parent in no way guarantees that one will be any good at it, but it’s a better place to start that “Oh crap, you’re not are you?"…

I just read an interesting article from the University of Michigan where a Prof. was able to MAKE RATS homosexual.  He gave female rats Testostrone and castrated the male rats...and it worked...so it seems that the exposure to hormones, especially in utero ...or in early infancy can indeed MAKE children homosexual...and as I pointed out before our environment is full of such hormones...synthetic ones that can’t be broken down completely by the human body and is now showing up in our water and soil and then of course there are the ones that we take voluntarily… The fact that it is not natural .... but can be engineered shows that it is an aberration...and therefore we should try to help not hurt those affected by our careless use of hormones

Numor,

What gender bias do you refer to?

The idea that children don’t NEED a father—that another Mother can replace him—is gender bias.  I embrace the diversity of gender.  You seem to be excusing separatism.  But don’t we both already know that separate is never equal?

What about YOUR sexism in insisting that a home with no father can’t be a good place to raise a child? Do you have the moral integrity to pursue this line of reasoning to its conclusion?

Surely you’ve seen the decades of research which prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that children raised without a father are at risk of so many more social problems than children raised in an intact—and diverse—home?  Surely you have, right?  They number in the thousands—it’s impossible to miss the risky implications of raising fatherless children…

Would you advocate that all single mothers - and, by your rationale, this includes WIDOWS - should have their children taken from them and placed in married households? Do you have the guts to say that?

Obviously YOU have the guts to put words into my mouth that I’ve never even implied.  Let me explain it to you:

1.  Single Mothers typically know the disadvantage that their children are at risk of.  And they typically accept them, for reasons of their own—they certainly don’t deny them—and no one is trying to take their children from them.  No one at all.

2. Widows know well they risks that their children are up against, due to the tragedy of the death of a father.  Many (as with single mothers) will remarry, and provide a father for their child.

Yet you, despite overwhelming evidence of the risks to children, would deny that there are any risks at all!  Would you also deny that the child of a widow has suffered a TRAGEDY?

Is a lesbian’s inability to love/live with another man any less risky or tragic for her child?  You seem to be excusing gender bias, as a valid reason to place children at extreme risk of all sorts of social ills that single mothers and widows both accept, and generally hope to avoid.

Your kid could care less about your sexual orientation.  And a having a “second mother” doesn’t exactly replace the hole left by an absent father, does it? 

Embrace the diversity of gender, my friend.  Separate is never equal.

Marty;

What on earth do you mean by “Yet again we see that gender bias and sexism is the real culprit here.”?  What gender bias do you refer to?  My willingness to countenance the possibility that lesbians might just make good parents? 

What about YOUR sexism in insisting that a home with no father can’t be a good place to raise a child?  Do you have the moral integrity to pursue this line of reasoning to its conclusion? Would you advocate that all single mothers - and, by your rationale, this includes WIDOWS - should have their children taken from them and placed in married households? Do you have the guts to say that?  Or is it just lesbians you have a problem with?  If so, have the decency to admit it and leave your phony handwringing oh-won’t-someone-think-of-the-children act out of it.

Children need both male and female parents for their models.
We are all on a spectrum of male and female hormones and psycho-sexual development, but most people have the anatomy of one of the genders...therefore they need to have a model to help them “fit” their anatomy ... putting hormones and emotions into a control area… Even in homosexual relationships there is ONE partner that is the “female” and ONE partner is the “male” so even they know that there has to be BOTH....they just let their “feelings” and prejudices get in the way.

Numor,

You might have a point if I didn’t know and love so many wonderful gay people.  Homophobia?  Please—you don’t know me at all do you?

I wouldn’t dare judge Mary Cheney’s parenting skills—I don’t even know the woman—but my guess is that she’s a wonderful and loving mother.  Her partner Ms. Poe is probably just as fine a “mother”.  There’s only one problem, and it has nothing to do with anyone’s “sexual orientation”:  Where is Daddy?  Where is the diversity?  Surely separate cannot be “equal”, can it?

Yet again we see that gender bias and sexism is the real culprit here.  Would that you cared enough for children to see when they are being spiritually abused.

Marty…

It’s only you and your homophobia which defines Mary Cheney’s household as a “broken home”.  In a society which paid no mind to sexual preference it would be just another family. 

Who are you to judge Mary Cheney’s parenting skills before she’s even given birth?  The woman obviously has some strength of will given she’s been brave and honest enough to come out, despite being in the public gaze and despite the wrath of her father’s neo-fascist acolytes.

Yet again we see that homophobia is the real culprit.  Mind your own business.

Oh my… I know homophobia exists - but it’s a sad, sad thing.  I have no academic merit.

No university would stand by it (that I know of) - but perhaps American uni’s do? 

This topic is my research area - and I’ve not heard of any of those ‘signatories” - then again if they are part of a hate group - maybe that’s why I haven’t?