Gay, Catholic and Doing Fine

[athrock]

You are entitled to your opinion, of course. No one here is forcing you to believe anything different about sex, especially not me. And I'm sure your daughter is lovely.

No, your side isn't forcing us to change our beliefs, but that's mostly because they don't care what we believe. What they are doing is trying to force submission to their beliefs, your beliefs, because that control has always been the true aim here.

You can't actually use the "nobody's forcing you to be homophobic" line when your side is actually attempting to force gay people into celibacy, to force their beliefs into law, and to force the law to bend to accommodate their bigotry at the expense of gay and straight couples alike. To say that nobody here is trying to force their beliefs onto us both severely misunderstands the criticism being leveled (which was at god and the religion promulgating those beliefs, not at you personally) and is also little more than a distraction from that criticism. You want to point to the fact that your religion hasn't yet found a way of preventing thoughtcrime through brainwashing (gee, what a huge act of charity on their part) while sweeping under the rug the many, many ways that they're trying to accomplish the thing we're actually objecting to through force of law.

Sorry, I'm not going to play that pretend game with you, no matter how genteel you are in phrasing it. You're a nice person, I don't like having to do this, but the way you skirt around issues like this really bugs me. It must be real nice to be able to make such flowery sentiments and genuinely mean them, but unfortunately guys like me, guys that your church has as its official doctrine are disordered and sinful, don't get that luxury. I have to live in the real world, where I and those like me are harangued, discriminated against, and assaulted, but I don't have to play along with you when you turn a blind eye to all that with these simpering "oh, it's all just opinion, I don't expect you to agree with me..." nothings.

It's cool that you're not forcing me to believe as you do. But don't try to tell me, for a moment, that those beliefs you hold aren't backed up by a multitude of people both powerful and otherwise who are willing to use every means at their disposal to force me to submit to those beliefs anyway.

I understand that having my views regarding gay sex is pretty much the worst sin around these forums. But I'm not going to lie about my beliefs.

I'm not going to ask you to lie, but I am going to ask you why you hold those beliefs, and why you feel compelled to ignore the very real suffering inflicted on behalf of those beliefs.

No one in the Catholic Church is forcing ANYONE to be celibate. What the Church IS doing is trying to help those who are homosexual find a path toward God that will result in eternal life.