These people get their kicks from shaming you in order to feel as if they have the moral high ground over a bunch of naive people who believe whatever theyre told and dont understand "science", who are stuck in some archaic age where people created the idea of God to explain away lightning : p They arent capable of rationally considering why homosexuality is wrong, and argue against you on it in part to feel that, because they have accepted an alternative way of thinking, they are more advanced than you.
But they justify the action with statements like "it doesnt hurt anybody" and "animals do it" so dont let it get to you : p
You consider homosexuality morally wrong. You come to this conclusion by the bible, because the bible says it's wrong. Fair enough. But from a secular standpoint, there's not really a moral issue with it. I don't think secularists look at homosexuality as a matter of right or wrong, the same way they don't tend to look at divorce as right or wrong. For secularists, divorce and homosexuality are both contextual; neither is viewed as either totally right or totally wrong.
Homosexuality, like the desire to end a human partnership, happens. Both exist. Some people are attracted to the same sex, and there are even neurological reasons for this. People do divorce, and people do find themselves being attracted to the same sex. The question for me isn't merely whether these things are right or wrong in certain worldviews, but how to address them in a way that gives both liberty and safety to people.
This thread is regarding homosexuality in America, so Ill discuss it that context. Firstly by asking the wuestion, would it be preferable in America for homosexuality itself to be illegal? Consider that homosexuality is a sexual desire for the same sex. Homosexuality is not an act, but a feeling. And criminalizing a feeling is both despotic, and ultimately futile. People will feel what they feel and there's nothing the law can do about that. The next question, should homosexual acts be criminalized? It is entirely possible to criminalize homosexual acts, of course. But it is also impossible to enforce this criminalization, except in public. What people do consensually in the privacy of their own beds is of course outside the ability of the government to control, unless the government adopt a big brother policy. How many Americans do you think would vote for that policy, much less allow it to be actively enforced?
So, you are left with few options: maintain a futile ban on private homosexual behaviours, along with a ban on public homosexual behaviours (kissing and holding hands). But of course, America has a secular constitution. So on what sociological or moral basis, outside the bible, could the government justify a legal ban on public hand-holding or kissing between two members of the opposite sex? Surely if secular law contain bases for justifiable bans on homosexual kissing and hand holding, it also contains bases for justifiable bans on heterosexual kissing or hand-holding, because secularism is intrinsically about equal footing for each citizen under the law. Secular law is classed as being not based on the laws of any particular religious code.
And if it were somehow decreed today that laws must align with Christian codes of conduct: what would happen to divorce, adultery, and being a member of another religion or beig atheist? The bible strictly forbids all of these actions. So, would people be imprisoned for commiting them? Again, how many Americans would vote for that, much less allow it to be enforced?
None of this is to say that adultery is right (I think it's morally negative), and none of this is to say that divorce or indeed homosexuality are "right" either. But they are freedoms that are afforded to people in secular constitutions like America's, and even though I personally dislike being a victim of cheating and think people could be more compassionate and thoughtful than to cheat or unnecessarily divorce, I still think people should be able to do those things by secular law.
Church is separated from state. Religious people may maintain their faiths and practice their relgions and are under no obligation to perform ceremonies for marriages that go against those tenets -- it's allowed for a priest to refuse a marriage ceremony to a divorcee in the Catholic church, just as it is allowed for a Protestant minister to refuse a gay marriage ceremony. Gay people may also marry through state ceremonies. The state is not the church; the church is not the state.
