A few years before gay marriage became the law of the land, I was in a Baltimore pub having dinner with a Jesuit priest. We were talking about vocation, and I was telling him I wanted to go to graduate school so I could learn how to offer theological arguments in favor of homosexuality.
“And you know”, I told him, “the story of Sodom and Gomorrah isn’t about homosexuality per se, but rape. Even Jesus interprets the cities’ downfall in terms of their inhospitality.”
“Sure”, he said, taking another drink.
“And the biblical laws prohibiting homosexual activity were intended to maximise the population”, I added.
He nodded.
“And Paul’s rhetoric about what goes against nature …”
He chop me off. “Why are you so obsessed with this? You want to focus all your graduate work on this?”
I didn’t perceive the question. I had to center all my attention on this. These were the so-called “clobber passages” that Catholics and Protestants alike have used to marginalise lgbtq+ people for centuries. I couldn’t just leave them be. I couldn’t just let them proceed unchallenged.
“Taking on these passages is significant to me because I’m gay. And I want to get married.”
“OK, then get married.”
“And I
Stances of Faiths on Gay Issues: Roman Catholic Church
BACKGROUND
The Roman Catholic Church is the largest Christian denomination in the world, with approximately 1.2 billion members across the globe. With its origins in the earliest days of Christianity, the Church traces its leadership––in the person of the Pope––to St. Peter, identified by Jesus as “the rock” on which the Church would be built.
The Catholic Church in the United States numbers over 70 million members, and is organized in 33 Provinces, each led by an archbishop. Each bishop answers directly to the Pope, not to an archbishop. Those Provinces are further divided into 195 dioceses, each led by a bishop. At the base of the organizational structure are local parishes, headed by a pastor, appointed by the local bishop. The Conference of Catholic Bishops in the United States meets semi-annually.
As part of a global organization with its institutional center at the Vatican, the Catholic Church in America is shaped by worldwide societal and cultural trends. It is further shaped by leaders that is entirely male, with women excluded from the priesthood and thus from key leaders roles.
LGB
'Pope Francis was game-changer for LGBT Catholics'
LGBT+ Catholics Westminster Pastoral Council
Pope Francis was a "real game-changer" when it came to the Catholic Church's treatment of gay people, a London LGBT+ faith group has said.
Martin Pendergast, the secretary of the LGBT+ Catholics Westminster Pastoral Council, said the pontiff had turned away from "really quite offensive" statements made by his predecessors on issues of sexuality and gender identity.
While Pope Francis maintained the Vatican's position that homosexual acts were sinful, he said gay people should not be marginalised from the Church, adding: "Who am I to judge?"
The LGBT+ Catholics Westminster group met the Pope at the Vatican in 2019, which Mr Pendergast said caused controversy.
"More conservative Catholics were up in arms because they saw this as the Pope affirming an LGBT group such as we were and are," he said.
He described the meeting as a "very significant step" in improving the Church's relations with the LGBT+ community.
"It was a personal affirmation, but it was also an affirmation of the kind of minis
Homosexuality
Throughout history, Jewish and Christian scholars have recognized that one of the main person sins involved in God’s destruction of Sodom was its people’s homosexual deed. But today, certain queer activists promote the thought that the sin of Sodom was merely a lack of hospitality. Although inhospitality is a sin, it is clearly the homosexual behavior of the Sodomites that is singled out for special criticism in the account of their city’s destruction. We must look to Scripture’s own interpretation of the sin of Sodom.
Jude 7 records that Sodom and Gomorrah “acted immorally and indulged in unnatural lust.” Ezekiel says that Sodom committed “abominable things” (Ezek. 16:50), which could relate to homosexual and heterosexual acts of sin. Lot even offered his two virgin daughters in place of his guests, but the men of Sodom rejected the offer, preferring homosexual sex over heterosexual sex (Gen. 19:8–9). But the Sodom incident is not the only moment the Old Testament deals with homosexuality. An explicit condemnation is found in the book of Leviticus: “You shall not lie down with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination. . . . If a man lies with a male as with a woman,