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Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

How men of cloth treat gay people is a good litmus test for whether they’re following the Christian tenets of love and forgiveness. Like, you’re dealing with one of God’s creatures, per the Christian worldview. You can’t claim to respect God’s plan and then turn around and say you know better when it makes you feel icky.

> job is to deal moral teachings, rather than follow the crowd

An American Catholic hating and despising gays is very much following their crowd.

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I think it's also important to recognize that while the Catholic church has values and principles they adhere to and are unlikely to change because they are so deeply founded in tradition and scripture - for example, that marriage (as in the sacrament) is between a man and a woman - the "men of the cloth" are expected to take care of their ministry as caring and loving sheperds. But that process is often based on personal and individual relationships and they will not reach headlines in the media.

The elephant in the room is the AIDs crisis. They already had a chance to demonstrate that they were capable of disagreeing with homosexuality but still treating people with live. Instead they left them to die.

What we have now is just saying "we super duper pinky promise that we've learned our lesson and won't do the exact same thing next time even though we totally are with MAGA."

Many a preacher will tell you that their way of "loving" gay people is to warn them of the hellfire awaiting them if they don't quit doing gay stuff and repent.

> Many a preacher will tell you that their way of "loving" gay people is to warn them of the hellfire awaiting them if they don't quit doing gay stuff and repent

I can actually accept this. They’re expressing an opinion, nothing more. If they then proceed to ostracise that person, or refuse to recognise their relations, that’s crossing into hate and pridefulness.

> If they then proceed to ostracise that person, that’s crossing into hate and pridefulness.

Agreed

> or refuse to recognise their relations, that’s crossing into hate and pridefulness.

There I think we need a finer view. "Mx. Other" is important to you? Yes, absolutely, they should recognize that. What you do with "Mx. Other" is good? Absolutely not, it's harming both you and "Mx. Other" who you clearly love.

See https://boldlybeloved.com/ for a beautiful example of how to do accompanying _right_ (in my opinion).

They try so hard these days to put a "loving" spin on things but it's always the same when you get down to it.

"Sorry, gay people, your desires for sexual intimacy are actually just temptation from Satan / the corrupt nature you inherited from Adam and Eve. Now be celibate your whole life because you were born broken."

They don't say the last bit in so many words, of course.

They say the same thing to those with other sinful desires. Why is it loving to say "I know you've desired to live without eyes your whole life, but you need to accept that God didn't give you that cross" but unloving to say "I know you desire to act sexually with a member of the same sex, but God didn't make sexual relations for the purpose of unity only"?

Now explain why a sterile man and woman or a pair of hetero 65 year olds marrying isn’t “against nature” or a thwarting of the primary “reproductive purpose” of marriage.

That one’s always fun to watch.

Neither is a Josephite marriage [1], surprisingly. Isn't that wonderful?

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephite_marriage

Biblically, sex should only take place within a marriage. If it takes place within a marriage, the sex is sanctified, and non-sinful. Any sex that takes place outside the context of a marriage, is inherently sinful. That means adultery, abuse, and so on. Same-sex individuals simply cannot marry within the Biblical meaning of the term, which means that their sexual activity will not be sanctified, and will therefore be a sinful action by nature of what it is.

Being a homosexual or feeling attraction to your own sex is not sinful - it's a very difficult temptation that, with God's help, you are supposed not to give into. It's acting on this same-sex attraction that is sinful, in much the same way as acting on attraction to your neigbor's wife would be sinful.

Is it possible to have forgiveness without contrition?

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