“Although the Church says ‘No’ to Gay Marriage, It Still Says ‘Yes’ to You.”

This is a great video. As someone struggling with SSA, I know it's a message that needs to be heard more. The silence is breaking, there is hope. Thanks for posting this.

An interesting video from a production standpoint, and the message is indeed helpful, if only a good start. There are still problems, however. A long-married Catholic couple with two children is not under a cloud of suspicion for using birth control, and either can serve the church in many ways; but a man who acknowledges he's gay can't effectively serve on a parish council, or as an usher, or teach CCD, or direct the choir, or be in the Knights of Columbus...much less serve as a permanent deacon or priest. A gay man recently was "caught" serving a parish council in Austria, and it became an international scandal.

And yet many of these men have been called to these positions, and served very well indeed in them.

And what if a man is living with another man? Does that prove that the sin mentioned in Leviticus is being committed? No more than a childless couple is "proven" to use contraception, yet there's a difference in perception and in practical outcome.

The Catechism points out that sexual orientation is inborn, yet denies the comforts of the cenobium to those who have the wrong one. An alcoholic can become a monk, but not a homosexual? Something is still ugly, wrong, and abusive here. Perhaps it's panic induced by the sex-abuse scandal. I'm not sure. I am sure that it is a fault of the human heart, not of the heart's Creator.

More souls may be lost on the playground than are saved before the altar. How shall we explain this to our God?

I disagree with Fr Jon's perception in many ways. I have not seen the Church act hatefully toward children of god who have same sex attraction. As a GK of the Knights of Columbus I've never been told that a person, with same sex attraction, living a chaste life is to be rejected from the order. I've been to men's retreats where men have stood up and admitted battling same sex attraction and where supported, considered brave, and were not restricted from serving where there was a need.

Having said that, those who would accuse me of "hate speech" because I oppose gay marriage are slanderous. Those who would accuse me of "hate speech" because I point out the 80% of the abuse cases where boys 13 to 17 years old and suggest it is as much a homosexual problem as a pediphile problem are wrong as well. It is my experience that any criticism what so ever of the gay lifestyle is treated as if I used the "N" word to an African American. Our church is not mistreating gays.

Dan

Contraception and sodomy are moral equivalents. It's simply that they are no longer seen as such after 65 years of "I'm ok, you're ok" feel-good moral relativism.
Contracepting (and permanently sterilized) heterosexuals as well as sodomites are both impeding life. Heterosexuals have the potentiality to procreate in a natural relationship and choose to deny the possibility. Sodomites have the potentiality to procreate with the opposite sex and choose to deny that possibility in an unnatural relationship.