Valica wrote:I have a serious question I've always wanted to ask a group of Christians.
Don't be too hard on me, I'm being serious.
Why (assuming you are) are you guys against gay marriage or gays in general?
Nowhere in the New Testament does it say homosexuality is a sin.
In Leviticus, Moses said that, and he was addressing a very small, very specific group of Jews.
Not only that, Jesus' coming supposedly fulfilled the Old Testament. That's why the NT was written.
There was, I believe, one mentioning of homosexuality by one of Jesus' apostles (not Jesus).
Once again, he wasn't too specific and he was talking about Romans in particular.
I've also heard the argument that it isn't natural, but plenty of animals practice homosexuality on a regular basis.
What happened to loving thy neighbor?
If you really think gay people will burn, why not let them get married and be happy while they are here and just worry about your own salvation?
The Catholic Church, at least, is against gay sex. It is not against gay people as people. One may counter that gay people are naturally particularly drawn to the sin of gay sex, but then, heterosexuals are drawn to a variety of sins of the flesh too (fornication, adultery, masturbation, etc.) - we are all called to chastity (even within marriage, it's not OK to go at it hammer and tongs all the time) and have a very hard time achieving it. God, being God, demands very high standards from us, and I'd be surprised if you'd need two hands, if any at all, to count the number of people who've gone through (a reasonably long) life without committing a single sin - but fortunately for us all, he's also forgiving and merciful. Gay marriage I'll come onto later.
Anyway, so why does the Catholic Church believe - or rather, why has it always believed - that gay sex is a sin? Though it is true that Jesus isn't on record in the Gospel as specifically condemning gay sex, it does not mean he condoned it. After all, there's plenty of things he never specifically condemned (arson? paedophilia? drug abuse? plagiarism?) that are firmly and uncontroversially in the 'sin' camp. It is condemned in the New Testament, however, three times. First in Romans 1:27, then in 1 Timothy 1:9-11 and 1 Corinthians 6:9-10. These are all Paul's epistles, and as you point out, Paul is not Jesus - however, he, his miraculous conversion story, and his teaching authority was clearly accepted by the disciples (themselves hand-picked by Jesus). If the (very, very) early Church was wrong about Paul and allowed him to completely corrupt Jesus' message before the Gospels were even written (let alone before the New Testament as a whole began to be compiled), then the entire Christian faith is called into question - what else did the apostles get wrong? To be a Christian is to, like Jesus, have a degree of trust in the apostles.
Another objection against the validity of Paul's condemnations of homosexual activity is to argue that he wasn't really condemning homosexual activity when he was doing so. This is primarily a modern phenomenon, largely driven by people specifically trying to reconcile Christianity and gay sex. Anyway, in the latter two passages linked above, Paul used the term arsenokoites, which is rarely ever seen in other Ancient Greek literature and seems to have been coined by Paul himself from 'arsenos' (men) and 'koitén' (a reference to lying in bed, with sexual connotations). The majority of modern scholars hold that this is a reference to the Septuagint, the Greek Old Testament, and the condemnation of gay sex in Leviticus, which reads "kai meta arsenos ou koiméthés koitén gynaikeian" and "kai os an koiméthé meta arsenos koitén gynaikos" in Leviticus 18 and 20 respectively. He doesn't use this neologism in Romans, which is an even more clear reference to homosexual activity. Moreover, Christianity being all about universal truth, there is nothing region-specific about this - it is not the case that gay sex is fine for people outside of Rome, or Corinth, or who aren't called Timothy. And though, being an extremely patriarchal society, Paul directed his attention to men having sex with men, the implication that men having sex with women is the way it's meant to be is clear (in Romans he refers to lying with men as one does with women, and Leviticus - which Paul is alluding to by using the term arsenokoites - does the same) - so lesbian sex is not condoned either.
So, Leviticus. I think the vast majority of people would concede that it's unambiguous as to what it's condemning, so this goes to the issue of whether the Old Law still applies to Christians today. Jesus said he came to fulfil the law, not to abolish it - but then we don't follow all the 613 mitzvot of Orthodox Judaism. However, we can divide the Old Law roughly into three groups - laws relating to government, laws relating to liturgy, and laws relating to morality. The first group, which would include things like judicial punishment, does not apply to us today, since the physical, territorial nation-state of the Kingdom of Israel does not exist - or rather, it has been superseded by the international Kingdom of God, ruled by Christ the King, which will come to fruition on the last day. The second group, which covers matters related to Temple practice and dietary or clothing restrictions, also no longer apply - the Temple sacrifice has been superseded by Christ's sacrifice, re-presented in the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass; Christ is our High Priest; and whereas Jews used to (Orthodox Jews, if I'm not mistaken, still do) eschew certain non-kosher foods, tattoos, and clothing woven of two kinds of material, Catholics today abstain from meat on Fridays (if their local bishops' conference chooses to impose that discipline) and maintain a celibate priesthood (in the Latin Rite), for example. These things are not intrinsically sinful, but either were banned under Mosaic law or are banned by the Church as a discipline - the general spirit of maintaining our distinctiveness as a community, and of self-denial for God, remain. The last group is matters of faith and morals, including the Ten Commandments and not having gay sex, which are upheld (respective of Jesus' clarifications, such as regarding the Sabbath or divorce) - what was objectively, universally wrong (i.e. not banned merely as a liturgical practice, or as a way of setting Israel apart from other nations) thousands of years ago remains objectively, universally wrong now. Most of this explanation I've remembered from an excellent piece of apologetics that I read a month or two ago and can't seem to find right now - when I do find it, I'll put a link to it.
In addition to Scripture, gay sex has been denounced by the Church consistently for its entire history. Just as Paul condemned it, the Church Fathers condemned it - Aristides, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Cyprian of Carthage, Eusebius of Caesarea, Basil the Great, and St. John Chrysostom. Again, if the Church has been wrong about this for the best part of 2000 years, and has got it wrong on all these Fathers, one must naturally question everything the Church teaches and has always taught. So, from all this and from the combination of Scripture and Sacred Tradition on other matters of sexual morality, the Church has developed a general theology of sexuality. Sex should involve putting the right thing in the right place (otherwise it's sodomy - or masturbation, if either of the 'wrongs' is the hand, I suppose), should take place within the confines of marriage (otherwise it's fornication), and should be potentially procreative (so no contraception - although couples can choose to deliberately abstain from sex when it's most likely to cause a pregnancy, and naturally infertile couples are also fine). You'll notice that this puts the vast majority of sexual encounters, in the Western world especially, in the sinful category. Since we've touched on marriage now, I'll get onto same-sex marriage - the issue here is that again, the Church has consistently taught that marriage is between one man and one woman, and if valid, is for life, and has practised this consistently too. Jesus himself reiterates that marriage is between one man and one woman when questioned by the Pharisees - his intention was primarily to condemn polygamy and divorce, sure, but here he was challenging the prevailing cultural mores regarding marriage. If Jesus wanted to add to his stricter stance on divorce and outlawing of polygamy by allowing same-sex marriage, a practice that certainly existed in pagan Rome at the time (albeit one often ridiculed and disapproved of), then he surely would have. Likewise, if he had wanted to challenge the prevailing attitude at the time against gay sex, then he surely would have. Jesus was not one for keeping quiet when the Law was being misapplied. So the Church will not marry same-sex couples. One could, however, make a case for saying that same-sex civil marriage is fine, since it's a completely separate institution to religious marriage; but I'd expect that the response from most of the clergy and most observant lay Catholics would be along the lines of "of course they're not completely separate, they've got the same name". In any case, I think that's a murkier issue than whether the Church can marry same-sex couples.
As to your other points, the Catholic Church would surely recognise that gay sex is naturally-occurring, as with all sins. It's not Catholic doctrine that being gay is a 'choice', for example (although one's not a heretic for believing that), although obviously (consensual) gay sex, as with all consensual sex, is, well, consensual. That does not mean that it is on the right side of natural law - that is (with respect to gay issues), the basic principle of sex (and marriage) being for the purposes of procreation. As for "love thy neighbour as thyself," (incidentally, a non-Christian taking a certain Christian tenet in isolation, and then flinging it in our faces to essentially denounce us as failing to live up to the tenets of our own faith, is generally not something we take particularly kindly to) that does not mean we should pretend sins don't exist when they do. That's the last thing Jesus would want us to do for ourselves, after all. And no, Catholics do not believe that gay people are necessarily destined to Hell. Those who have gay sex under certain circumstances (full knowledge of what one's doing and its gravity, or something like that) have committed a mortal sin, and would expect to go to Hell if they were to die without repenting and confessing that sin - however, one cannot account for God's mercy, and it would be wrong of us here on Earth to say that anyone in particular has gone to Hell. We simply don't know, and we should hope they haven't. Moreover, I'd expect the majority of people have committed a mortal sin at some point in their lives - it's not specifically, and probably not even disproportionately, a 'gay thing'.
As I probably said at some point, I can only speak for what, to the best of my knowledge, the Catholic Church teaches. But there we go. Sorry about the length.
