@fredsbend Yes. On some of the issues, but not on all. In particular, young people tend more than the older generation to think that women should have access to all positions in the church, including all ordained positions (which much of evangelicalism has now embraced), and also to oppose any sort of discrimination against gays and lesbians (which most of evangelicalism has not embraced).

@PeterTurner Yep haha!

@fredsbend I'm not in the US so it's a bit hard for me to tell exactly what's going on, the American bloggers and such that I follow a little don't seem to support Trump

@LeeWoofenden I'm not sure what young people you're talking to. Boys have a healthy and normal distaste for homosexuality once they find out what it is. Trouble is, like abortion, I don't think most young people even know what these things are. They're abstracted to the point of meaninglessness

@PeterTurner Clearly you're not a young person living in today's world. Obviously not all young people are accepting of homosexuality. But younger people are more likely to be accepting of it than older people. I shouldn't have to cite sources, but if you doubt this, I'll look them up. Or you can google it yourself. What young boys and girls commonly have today is a healthy respect for other people regardless of their sexual orientation.

> Boys have a healthy and normal distaste for homosexuality once they find out what it is.

"Boys" is gonna need clarification too. I mean, "ewww girls!" is a common attitude for a significant chunk of a boy's life. (At least, in my experience.)

In any case, just because a particular reaction or attitude is "natural" or "normal" does not mean it is good or right.

@PeterTurner is talking about something slightly different than @LeeWoofenden. Peter is bringing up the fact that a large chuck do indeed find homosexuality repulsive, as proved when exposed to relatively benign images of men kissing.

Despite the fact that Lee points out these same people often accept the behavior as not needing their intervention.

Also, I don't know anything about evangelicalism and I'm just re-hashing a Chesterton quote (from 100 years ago) which I can't remember the source for.

For abortion, I can see you "abstraction" argument. For homosexuality, maybe a little, but not really.

@fredsbend I'll give a concrete example...

My oldest daughter is eleven, she's homeschooled. She know's "the facts of life" and has been there for 3 of her siblings births. She goes to a very small Catholic school once a week for a few classes with her siblings. She's told me about two different kids who have told her that they're gay.

One was a boy she liked, the other was a kid who just kept saying "I'm gay" on the playground.

I really don't think these kids know what they're talking about.

and by "young people" I don't mean college students. Most people in college are so utterly confused and destroyed at that point they're opinion is almost meaningless (unless they take Frank Zappa's advice and stick close to Church Related Activities)

I'm talking about young adults, bit children. 15 at the youngest, 25 oldest.

@fredsbend my rather meaningless feeling on the matter is that the public or elite highschools and public or elite universities are the impetus behind these feelings of acceptance shared by so many and that's just proven by @lee's statistics if he digs 'em up.

So by 15 they're getting messed up and by 25, they're thoroughly confused.

I was pretty confused myself, until I started taking my faith seriously, consecrating myself to Mary, going to Mass because I wanted to and reading G.K. Chesterton. Meeting my future wife (whose head was on straight) helped too.

So when I got to my last two years of college (10 years ago now) and was already married with a baby on the way, I could step back a bit and analyze what I was seeing - and this is exactly what it looked like.

But you're right, I think 15 to 25 year olds come face to face with homosexuality (and all sexuality) in a concrete way, their thinking about it needs to be concrete by then. It's the same way they come face to face with drugs or house fires - pretty unexpected; all at once; and you'd better have a plan first.

@PeterTurner I think the general feeling is that they just don't feel it's their responsibility to legislate another's private matter. That's how I feel about it, yet at the same time I take the unpopular opinion that it is a disorder and distinctly not healthy, and I wish society would stop telling everyone that it is normal and healthy.

Along with transgender and all the other strange things.

@PeterTurner They're easy enough to find with the simplest of Google searches. Here's one from Pew Research: "Though still conservative, young evangelicals are more liberal than their elders on some issues."

@PeterTurner Considering that the Catholic Church has been thoroughly confused about sexual issues for most or all of its many centuries of existence, the fact that some teens and twenty-somethings are confused about sex is not at all surprising. What young people are increasingly not confused about is that sexual orientation is not something that can be changed, but that must be accepted and respected.

@fredsbend Pragmatically, whatever one's personal feelings may be about homosexuality, calling it unhealthy and a disorder accomplishes nothing good, and does a lot of damage. If it were something that could be changed, maybe it wouldn't be a moot point. But experience and evidence increasingly shows that homosexuals cannot change into heterosexuals, no matter how hard conservative Christians try to pray away the gay.

So what good is it to say that it's a disorder and not healthy? All that does is stigmatize people who have no possibility of being any other way.

@LeeWoofenden I think you're right on an observational level. I just see people who believe those things as being confused into them rather than not confused.

@PeterTurner And I see people who believe as you do as being confused rather than not confused.

@PeterTurner Or more directly, as being wrong.

@PeterTurner And I think that the Catholic Church has done more damage in the area of human sexuality than any other institution in the world that I can think of.

@LeeWoofenden do you think young people are coming to the conclusion that homosexuality is an acceptable way to live ones life of their own accord? spontaneously?

@PeterTurner Do you think that homosexuality is a choice?

@PeterTurner The Catholic Church is making some efforts to clean up its messes. But it's still got a very long way to go. Abolishing celibacy in the priesthood would be a solid step forward.

@LeeWoofenden having sex is a choice. being perverted is a choice. and people have freewill and are not defined by their sexuality. So I think it must be a choice or doesn't have any meaning at all.

@PeterTurner And that's why you're utterly confused and wrong about homosexuality. You can't even think straight about it.

@PeterTurner Really, I doubt you even understand what homosexuality is.

@LeeWoofenden you're probably right about that, I always thought it has something to do with a fruitless rubbing of genitals.

I guess I'm the perverted one, oh well.

@PeterTurner I hope you're making a lame attempt at humor with that statement.

@PeterTurner The Bible actually says nothing at all about homosexuality. If you don't realize and understand that, then you don't know what homosexuality is.

To get right to the point, homosexuality is not men having sex with men and women having sex with women. Throughout history many heterosexual men have had sex with other men. It still happens today in prisons and other toxic environments.

@LeeWoofenden well if the Bible doesn't say anything about it, then I guess I have to turn to the Catechism. Where it says everything you've said about not judging and also not knowing the reasons why people are whatever way they are while still maintaining it is a disorder.

Homosexuality is people being sexually attracted to people of their own sex rather than of the opposite sex. Heterosexuality is people being sexually attracted to the opposite sex. Bisexuality is people being sexually attracted to either sex. Whether a person actually has sex at all is utterly irrelevant to whether a person is homosexual, heterosexual, or bisexual.

@LeeWoofenden I thought that was "Homoromantic".

@PeterTurner The idea that the Catholic Church does not judge homosexuals is ludicrous. Does the Catholic Church do same-sex marriages? Does the Catholic Church allow openly gay men to be priests? (As opposed to the thousands of closeted gay men who are priests.)

@PeterTurner "Homoromantic" is not a commonly in-use term. The standard terms are homosexual, heterosexual, and bisexual. And they are not defined by what sex you have sex with. They're defined by what sex you're sexually attracted to.

@LeeWoofenden There's a difference between judging the person and judging actions. The Catholic Church can't promote something she sees as sinful, that would be scandalous.

The need to not scandalize the faithful, especially children, is one of the many reasons why those things can't happen.

Further, in Bible times, in the wider culture men were generally seen as sexually virile and masculine, not based on whether they had sex with women, but based on whether they were the dominant person in the sex act, which basically means the one doing the penetrating. Whether it was a woman or a man who was penetrated didn't matter.

@PeterTurner I rest my case. The Catholic Church judges homosexuals because it regards homosexuality as sinful.

@LeeWoofenden no, the scandal is sinful - please pick your case back up.

@PeterTurner But it's okay to scandalize gay and lesbian people, and create an atmosphere in which they are suppressed, treated prejudicially, and quite often driven to suicide because their priests and teachers tell them that they are in a state of sin that they see no way out of but their own death.

> Scandal is an attitude or behavior which leads another to do evil. The person who gives scandal becomes his neighbor’s tempter. He damages virtue and integrity; he may even draw his brother into spiritual death. Scandal is a grave offense if by deed or omission another is deliberately led into a grave offense.

ccc.usccb.org/flipbooks/catechism/index.html#551/z

@PeterTurner People are not "drawn into" homosexuality. If that's what you think, then you absolutely do not understand homosexuality. A person either is or isn't homosexual. People do not become homosexual by seeing others engaging in homosexual acts.

If you normalize homosexuality, you do a grave injustice to those "little ones" Jesus talks about. Kids do not need to know about that kind of stuff early on in life.

The vast bulk of the population (somewhere between 96.5% and 98.5%) are heterosexual. A small but significant minority (somewhere between 1.5% and 3.5%) are homosexual or bisexual. No amount of social repression or social acceptance is going to change that. It's simply a fact of life.

@PeterTurner Talking to little children about sex in general is tricky. But once that small percentage starts to realize they're attracted to their own sex rather than to the opposite sex, they certainly do need to know about it, or a lifetime of emotional pain and suffering is just beginning for them.

And the Catholic Church is one of the largest institutions inflicting that emotional pain and suffering on them.

@LeeWoofenden Every person I know well who says they're a gay (for more than a few years at least) has had a really awful upbringing, usually a father who didn't nurture or respect them.

@LeeWoofenden My argument to that is that it's the stiff necked people within the Catholic Church who refuse to deal with people that are the problem - coupled with the need to safeguard children from the scandal mentioned above

@PeterTurner Then you need to meet more gays and lesbians. If you think it's caused by parental treatment and attitudes, you are, not to put too fine point on it, very ignorant about homosexuality. Speaking for myself, I know a number of gays and lesbians who had perfectly fine upbringings, and were treated by their parents the same as their heterosexual siblings were treated.

@PeterTurner You really should learn something about homosexuality before spreading more and more misinformation about it.

@PeterTurner The fact of the matter is that lots and lots of people have awful upbringings, fathers who didn't nurture and respect them, and so on. But the same small percentage of people are still gay or lesbian regardless. If distant, disrespectful fathers were the cause of homosexuality, somewhere between 25% and 75% of people would be homosexuals. There are an awful lot of awful fathers out there.

@LeeWoofenden Is there really stuff that needs to be learned?

@PeterTurner Yes. Do some reading from other than Catholic sources. Educate yourself. You're spouting standard stupidity about homosexuality.

@LeeWoofenden These are a bunch of people who are convinced they're right because something is telling them that they're OK just the way they are. The Catholic Church says you're never quite OK just the way you are.

To continue on the "bad parents" line, if everyone who's confided in me pastorally or personally about having terrible parents were any indication, once again there would be vastly more gays and lesbians than there are if that were a cause of homosexuality.

@PeterTurner Okay, then remain ignorant. It's no skin off my back. But you'll continue to do a lot of damage any time you speak about homosexuality. If you're okay with that, then by all means don't bother to actually gain any real, factual knowledge about homosexuality.

@LeeWoofenden That's a pointless extrapolation. It's like saying, "because I only fish with corn, I'm only going to catch carp".

@PeterTurner Regardless, you're simply wrong about bad parenting causing homosexuality. There have been many studies to attempt to determine causes for homosexuality. No correlation has been found between bad parenting and homosexuality. The fact is, we still don't know for sure why a certain small percentage of the population is attracted to their own sex rather than to the opposite sex.

@LeeWoofenden I would like to do some damage, I can't stand society as it stands and I want to bring it down a few pegs, is that so wrong?

@PeterTurner If you're participating in a culture that causes teen suicides among gay and lesbian youth to be far higher than teen suicide among straight youth, then yes, that is very wrong. And the fact of the matter is that you are participating in that culture by accepting the Catholic Church's ignorant and willfully uninformed views of homosexuality.

If your conscience is okay with that, then go for it. The rest of us will try to pick up the pieces of the damage you do as best we can.

But we can't unsuicide kids who commit suicide because they've been told that what they are is evil and sinful.

@LeeWoofenden the kids don't even know that suicide is sinful!

@PeterTurner But they're still dead. And many of them are dead because their Catholic priest told them that homosexuality is a sin. And when they realize that no matter how much they want not to be attracted to the same sex, they still are attracted to the same sex, they figure that the best way out is just to kill themselves.

The Catholic Church and its hierarchy and priests will have to answer for all those deaths when they stand before God's judgment seat.

The Catholic Church would be better to put a millstone around its neck than to give that message to innocent young people who, through no action or their own, and without any possibility of being anything else, happen to be gay or lesbian rather than straight.

It is a grave evil and sin of the Catholic Church.

@LeeWoofenden you don't have statistics that back up people who confess sexual sins (masturbation, fornication or homosexuality) are less likely to commit them as time goes on?

@PeterTurner I'm not going to do all your work for you. If you seriously don't want to be ignorant, misinformed, and a perpetrator of great harm on gay, lesbian, and bisexual youth and adults, I would strongly urge you to actually study and learn something about the issue, as I have.

Because it's a personal choice to follow Jesus and believe in the Catholic Church. Nobody is pressuring kids to say anything at all in confessionals any more.

When I was young, I used to think the way you do. Then I began actually reading studies and statistics, histories and literature about homosexuality. And I realized that I was wrong about homosexuality.

It would be well for you to consider how the Catholic Church is now, there were about 35 years of very bad catechesis in the USA that we're just digging out from underneath.

@PeterTurner How stupid do you think teens are? Catholic teens know that the Catholic Church believes homosexuality is evil and sinful. They don't have to confess it in the confessional. All they have to do is hear the priest mention it once, in any context, and they know that the church condemns what they are.

Or they can just look it up online. It's really no secret.

@PeterTurner If the Catholic Church even survives all of the evil it has done, it will be purely by the grace of God.

@LeeWoofenden I've taught quite a few 6,7,8,9th graders Cathechism, they're all over the place when it comes to knowledge of sexuality (and they're all in the same public school)

I'm glad that the Catholic Church is gradually reforming itself. But the very fact that it did so much damage for so many centuries, and continues to do much damage even today on this very issue, among others, should have invalidated its position as Christ's church many centuries ago. And in my view, its status as Christ's church is invalidated because it has too badly shredded what Christ taught in the Gospels for too many centuries.

@PeterTurner Believe me, any of them that begin to realize that they're attracted to their own sex rather than to the opposite sex will be sponges when it comes to anything about homosexuality. Even an idle side comment by the priest to the effect that homosexuality is contrary to God's plan will loom huge in their minds.

Priest or other Catholic teacher.

There is no gay or lesbian Catholic youth who realizes that they're gay or lesbian and does not have a pretty good idea that the Catholic Church condemns homosexuality.

I'm sorry, Peter, but the Catholic Church can't have it both ways. It can't condemn homosexuality as evil and sinful while claiming not to judge gays, lesbians, and bisexuals.

@LeeWoofenden what they don't know is what the Catholic Church actually teaches (and it's like two paragraphs) about homosexuality.

@PeterTurner And what do those two paragraphs say?

> Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.”

> They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.

So, it condemns homosexual acts without condemning homosexuality. It condemns homosexual acts, not because they're gross, but because they're not generative.

@PeterTurner For a gay or lesbian youth, that says it all. The way they are can under no circumstances be approved by the Catholic Church. Which is just another way of saying exactly what I've been saying throughout this entire conversation.

@PeterTurner I.e. the Catholic Church doesn't understand homosexuality any better than you do. Nor does it understand heterosexuality, or marriage, or any other related subject. It is in the deepest ignorance on these subjects, because its thinking on them is not only uninformed, but grossly materialistic.

@PeterTurner The Catholic Church's attitude toward sexuality is materialistic because its primary view is that the purpose of sex is procreation, and that sex not for the purpose of procreation is suspect, if not downright wrong and sinful. It is vastly ignorant of the true, spiritual nature of marriage, and of sexuality as a physical expression of the spiritual oneness of two people who have become one through true, spiritual marriage.

> The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided.

> These persons are called to fulfill God’s will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.

The very fact that the Catholic Church requires its spiritual leaders not to marry invalidates it as a source of genuine truth about marriage.

> Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.

@LeeWoofenden It also asks it's leaders not to sin, yet expects them to help those who do.

@PeterTurner This is so ignorant, uninformed, damaging, and destructive that I can hardly even read it without anger seething up in me. The Catholic Church is massively ignorant of the massive damage it is doing. But it could know, if it wanted to. And that's why its leaders, priests, and teachers will have much to answer for when they stand before Christ's throne.

@LeeWoofenden Plus every marriage is as different as every person, you can't know everything about marriage by being married.

When those popes, archbishops, bishops, and priests who crafted and supported that statement stand before God on the day of judgment, all of the young people who committed suicide because of the message they heard from the Catholic Church about their "condition" will be shown to them, and they will have to accept responsibility for all of those deaths. The blood will be on their hands.

For you this may be all academic. But I've talked to gays and lesbians who were condemned by the Catholic Church, and I've heard their pain and suffering. And these were the ones who did not kill themselves.

@PeterTurner I'm sorry, Peter, but I have to stop talking about this now. I am becoming too angry at the Catholic Church for all of its terrible sins against these innocent people. I would strongly implore you to leave your ignorance behind, and stop participating in this slaughter of the innocents.

yeah, I've got a much older cousin who felt condemned by the Catholic Church. I'm not sure who was condemning him at the time, but they did our family a disservice.

@LeeWoofenden There's lots of ailments we cannot cure. That doesn't change the fact it's an ailment, and we should continually strive to cure it. Pick pretty much any disease, condition, malady, malformation, or mental illness. Your "well we can't do anything about it" makes no sense for them, therefore makes no sense for homosexuality, etc.

So, no, doing nothing is not the pragmatic decision. That's the non confrontational, easy, politically correct decision.

What you are actually arguing for is that society try it's best to help them cope with it, offering protections asking the lines of the ADA. That's perfectly reasonable, but society's woes and pleasures doesn't dictate science or common sense.

@PeterTurner As I understand it, "homosexual" and "homoromantic" are two different things. Respectively, sexual attraction to those of the same sex and romantic attraction to those of the same sex. Closely related but not the same thing.

@fredsbend How, exactly, is homosexuality a disease?

@fredsbend Diseases are diseases because by their nature they damage and destroy the human body and mind. Cancer gradually replaces healthy, functioning cells with unhealthy, non-functioning cells until there aren't enough functioning cells left to sustain the body's vital functions, and the body dies. Heart disease gradually weakens the heart's muscle tissue until it can no longer supply blood to the body, and the body dies.

It doesn't matter whether society approves or disapproves of cancer or heart disease. The Pope could declare them two of the Seven Salubrious Virtues, and they would still continue to destroy and kill people's bodies because by their intrinsic nature they are destructive of the human body.

How, then, is homosexuality by its intrinsic nature in any way destructive of the human body and mind? I understand that religious and social disapproval causes homosexuals many mental and even physical problems. But that's not homosexuality causing damage. It's societal attitudes toward homosexuality causing problems.

Further, let's compare apples to apples. The U.S. (along with many other Western countries) has now legalized same-sex marriage, and put it on the same footing as opposite-sex marriage. So in analyzing the supposed harm done by homosexuality, which might cause it to be classified as a disease, to be fair we must compare faithful, monogamous same-sex relationships to faithful, monogamous opposite-sex relationships.

With that in mind, religious dogma and societal attitudes aside, what harm does homosexuality intrinsically cause that would prompt us to label it a disease, but not to label heterosexuality a disease due to parallel phenomena occurring in heterosexual relationships?

@LeeWoofenden Decorating the place for Halloween with a strawman, I see. Nice. ... In all seriousness though, if homosexuality was any of the possibilities fredsbend listed, it would be a mental illness. Your following messages don't really speak to that possibility.

@El'endiaStarman But that's exactly the question I'm asking: Does homosexuality actually exhibit any of the possibilities @fredsbend listed? Saying, "Maybe it's a disease! Maybe it does terrible things!" doesn't actually make it a disease.

So what terrible things does it do?

Hmm. I'd like to take a different tack for a moment, and I'm sure you'll see the parallel. What do you think about autism? Is it normal, natural, and/or good?

@El'endiaStarman You tell me. Do you consider autism to be a disease? And if so, on what basis do you consider it to be a disease?

@LeeWoofenden I don't consider it a disease. If anything, it's a mental illness or disability. (Can get a bit murky for the high-functioning forms.)

@El'endiaStarman What do you see as the difference between an illness and a disease?

And regardless of that, in what way is it a disability?

@LeeWoofenden One of the main factors used to diagnose autism is inability (or lack of desire to) interact with other people the way most people do. E.g. blindness to social cues and/or body language, obsessiveness over little details, sudden outbursts of anger/violence, etc.

@El'endiaStarman Okay, so there are discernible social malfunctions compared to people who don't have autism. And that's why it's considered a disorder or disability?

@LeeWoofenden I don't think the distinction between disease and illness is important here. What matters is that it's possible for a mental illness to not be entirely destructive. For example, a person with high-functioning autism might be extremely good at solving problems, making them useful in certain situations or jobs. Homosexuality need not be destructive in the slightest if the definition of "mental illness" doesn't call for it.

Heck, if "mental illness" is defined as anything sufficiently abnormal that originates in the mind/brain, you could consider homosexuality as a mental illness. (I would hope that's not the definition though.)

@LeeWoofenden That seems accurate enough. Is your point that homosexuals don't have such discernible issues, so homosexuality can't be considered a disorder/disability in that way?

@El'endiaStarman But that's really just appealing to the margins. In general, the more severe the autism, the more severe the difficulties in normal social interactions, healthy emotional responses, and so on. It's considered a disorder because it damages the person's ability to function socially and emotionally. Further, that damage is not due to external factors such as social or religious disapproval, but is intrinsic to the condition of autism itself.

@El'endiaStarman So far I haven't come up with any way that homosexuals can be considered "diseased" or "disordered" due to the intrinsic nature of homosexuality. Even the inability to bear children does not qualify. Post-menopausal women cannot bear children. Do we therefore consider them diseased or disordered, and therefore ineligible to get married?

@El'endiaStarman Speaking of not bearing children, one evolutionary theory as to how homosexuals became a small but apparently fairly constant percentage of the human population is that tribe members who didn't bear children of their own provided adult care and mentorship for others' children, giving that tribe an overall advantage in the survival rate of its children.

Related:

> 59% of liberals say it’s hate speech to say transgender people have a mental disorder

cato.org/blog/…

We can't even have the discussion, in a large chunk of people's minds.

@LeeWoofenden ping