One topic that came up this evening at youth group was homosexuality. While I do not condone some of the comments made during discussion, I felt I needed to put together a post on the subject.

First off, as with all sins, we are called to hate the sin but love the sinner. For example, just because someone is an alcoholic doesn’t mean that they get drunk every day. It is fully possible through different recovery programs that someone could acknowledge themself as an alcoholic but stay far away from alcohol. In other words, they have distanced themselves from the act.

Keep in mind that we are talking about two different things here - the person and the act. There is the act of getting drunk and there is the person who has an urge to drink. There are alcoholics out there who have succesfully stayed away from drinking for a number of years and there are people out there who aren’t alcoholics but are more than fully capable of getting drunk. So, an alcoholic is not necessarily a drunk and a drunk is not necessarily an alcoholic.

The same goes for people who are homosexual. There are people who are attracted to the same sex, and there are people who actually engage in those acts. These are two separate distinctions and it’s important for people to understand that fact. Just because someone is homosexual doesn’t mean that they necessarily give into their urges. Once again, we must hate the sin but look on the sinner with compassion and charity.

The Catholic Church even mentions this. In the Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraphs 2357-2359, we see the statement that homosexuals "must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided." This means that we are obligated to treat people with compassion and respect. In fact, I think that we can even extend those two sentences out to the entire world. Any unjust discrimination to anyone should be avoided.

People who are homosexual are called to live a chaste lifestyle. Chastity is not a bad thing, in fact, you are probably practicing chastity right now. Everyone is called to be chaste during their life - singles, religious, and yes, even married couples. Most of marriage is an act of chastity.

So once again, we are left with the idea of hate the sin but love the sinner. Is this not a philosophy that we take with other sins in our life? With regard to alcoholics, no one should say "I hate all alcoholics, it’s a choice and anyone who is an alcoholic is wrong." Rather, we should look on people with love, compassion and respect - this is the Christian ideal, this is the Christian response that we should have to those people in our lives.

For more information about this topic, I refer you to the following websites:
Pure Love Club - A question and answer format on homosexuality
Catholic Answers - A more in-depth treatment of the topic with references to the Catechism and scripture