Intolerance and ignorance

By Steve ~

While browsing a christian forum to pick up possible opposing arguments to the pro gay marriage stance that I take, I saw a question asking something along the lines of: "Why is gay marriage unnatural?" The response from one of the priests on the website was frightening:

Image by juicyrai via Flickr

"Hi,

We don’t have individual, subjective natural laws. Natural law is objective and applies to all people. Our awareness of it derives from right reason and not from feelings. There are some people who choose to take pleasure in incest. This doesn’t mean that such activity comes from the natural law. It’s quite the opposite. The taboo of incest comes from natural law. Because some people feel an attraction doesn’t make it natural. The vast majority of humans are repulsed by incest because it threatens the integrity of the family which is the central cell of human social life. The vast majority of humans are repulsed by same sex attraction and so called same sex marriage for the same reason. Most people with same sex attraction are actually repulsed by it as well—despite the attraction they feel for members of their same sex.

I realize that these statements can enrage many people because they don’t want them to be true. But this doesn’t make them untrue. It is only when we recognize the hunger for meaning lying at the core of our being that we open ourselves to the Creator and recognize that we are not enough for ourselves and that ultimately we cannot be happy by following only that which gives immediate pleasure.

How dare he compare same-sex marriage to incest. Two men or two women that are attracted to one another is a completely different thing from, say, a father and a daughter.

To claim that the vast majority of humans are repulsed by same sex attraction is preposterous. This is a projection of his own homophobia upon the rest of the world, and is utterly false.

To go further and say that most people with same sex attraction are repulsed by it as well is a ridiculous assumption. Just because he finds same sex attraction repulsive does not give him the right to say that the people who actually feel these attractions share his views.

I will admit that some people that have homosexual tendencies are, as a result, homophobic, but I believe that this is a result of church teachings that homosexuals are evil and go to hell.

"I realize that these statements can enrage many people."

Well that goes without saying. How can you expect to preach such an intolerant and ignorant doctrine and expect people who are not brainwashed by your fear tactics to believe it as true?

I am so frustrated and tired with the intolerance and ignorance plaguing our world. Hopefully one day we can look back, as with interracial marriage, and ask ourselves, how was that ever not legal?

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