new

Look, Christians do not hate gays, we in fact love them. When I say this, I truly mean it. Rather than trying to oppress them, what we are in fact doing is more akin to an intervention to help those whom we love stop living such an unhealthy and morally damaging lifestyle. They might not be hurting other people, but I do not think it is any coincidence that mental illness is many degrees worse among homosexuals, especially transgenders, than others, nor can I bring myself to ignore the fact that a disproportionate amount of them were molested as children, and it would be wilfully ignorant for me to pretend that homosexual promiscuity is not responsible for the spread and proliferation of AIDS and HIV around the world, along with many other lesser STDs due to the fact that homosexuals are so much more promiscuous and prone to unsafe sex than sexually healthy people. Finally, and most importantly of all, as Christians we must accept Bibical truth wherever possible, even if modern society disdains the truth, and so even if we end up living in a world in which gay "marriage" is legal in every part of every nation, all good Christians will continue to shout from the rooftops that this is wrong. The fact that all these social and health problems have arisen as a result of the acceptance of homosexuality as "normal" serves to show that, once again, the Word of God is indeed the best rulebook by which to run society and live one's life.

Sometimes, it is right to help someone even if they are only harming themselves. Just as I would want to see a heroin addict kick his habit, I also want to see homosexuals kick their habit. You are almost certainly the same on other issues that have not yet been pushed upon you since youth by the media. Take incest for example. I assume you are not a proponent of brothers and sisters legally having sex and even marrying simply because they are "consenting adults" who "aren't hurtning anyone"? Or what about bestiality? Before you tell me that "animals can't consent", consider the case of a man on Loveline who described how he "presents" and lets his dog enter him from behind. The very act is initiated by the dog and therefore is consensual. Is this sort of thing okay to you? Can you support this just because the dog and the man are having consensual sex and "aren't hurting anyone"? Please consider all of these things as well as all the other possible sexual perversions out there that could someday be argued are "normal" for the same reasons you currently believe homosexuality to be healthy and non-damaging. Sometimes, even if it might hurt their feelings, we must do all that is within our power to save a person. I care a lot more about the eternal soul of people caught up in the gay lifestyle than I do about their hurt feelings between now and their redemption.

(Gay marriage discussion)

Not unless I can get the same legal rights between me and my buddy Alex, between me and my mother, between me and my manager (if I ever get employed again), and between me and my dog, Brick.

There is nothing which makes a gay relationship any better than these. In fact, there is less in most cases. A child has a natural right to a mother. A manager and an employer also have a very special relationship.

Marriage proper is how children come about. Children have a right to a mother and a father by the nature of the sexual act, and they have a right for that mother and father to love each other, love the child, and love God (insofar as they are able).

You take away - or worse, trivialise - a part of a man's life story by giving him two mothers or two fathers, and making the kid the child of one of 'em and a sperm donor, or one of 'em and an surrogate, or one of them and a nameless woman who gave her eggs away. A man has the right to be wanted by both parties from the beginning. (Now, there are other reasons why surrogacy, artificial insemination, in vitro and the like are wrong, and I shall not get into those here.)

I agree teen pregnancy is a problem. I agree a child's parents should love each other, as well as the kid. But the answer is not to breed kids and then give them over to people who feel entitled to a child, much less people who feel entitled to marriage (if there's a Ms. Right out there for me, I sure haven't met her!!), or even people who do not know what love is. Sex is not love. It is not the epitome of love. It is not the summit of love. It is not the proof of love. It is a tool to express love, just as a rum-and-coke or paying the bills, or a good massage might be.

It is also something more than that. The very fact that you can read this - or at you exist at all - is proof sex is far more powerful than we give it credit for. You gotta respect sex, because while it is not love and is a tool, it is also how we come into the world. And who doesn't thank their parents for raising them right (or wish their parents had raised em right)? We owe our lives, biologically and socially, to our parents. When they succeed society keeps on chugging. When they fail it is a catastrophe. The answer is NOT to hand children over to a family situation we don't know the consequences of - at best. The answer is to fix the situation we have by reforming our understanding of sexuality and the human person - to have more reverence for the thing, and to have more reverence for the child.

The government has no part in society when it comes to sex. This is an area outside of its jurisdiction. It must come from the grassroots level, just as it did 2000 years ago - and even farther back with the Jews. You cannot legislate morality. It has to be a part of the society first on a cultural level. I have to learn to be chaste, as would my wife (if I ever had one). I would have to teach my children, so they can teach their children. And we would have to teach our fellow Catholics how to be chaste as well once we had learned.

If God is on our side, nothing can stop us if we, the Catholic Church (and her anonymous allies) clean house and make ourselves in God's image insofar as we can, and then take it to the world. If He isn't, or worse doesn't exist, does it really matter? We'll fail, either way. The change has to start within one's own heart, not without. And I guarantee you legalising gay marriage will utterly fail. Just like Prohibition did. Just like legalising slavery in America up to the Civil War. Just like Plessy v. Fergusson. Just like the Comstock laws. People will either learn to respect their bodies - rather than indulging in them, or on the other hand hiding them like Puritans - or they'll continue oscillating between Puritanism and Paganism, so to speak - between indulging in their sexual cravings and hiding them for the well being of society.

Unless people begin living a balanced life. And that more or less, with very few exceptions, can only be found in the Catholic Church today (mind, I am including the Orthodox, who are more or less Catholic).