Church Teaches Gay Inequality
I believe that teaching that homosexuality is a defect ingrains prejudice and is thus, cruel and exclusionary to the gay population. I deem the church’s teachings that homosexuality is something to move beyond, to be quite harmful to young minds. The church’s problem here (no matter how benevolent they claim their intentions to be) is that they indeed teach kids that they’re unusually flawed should they turn out to be homosexual. They go on to suggest that said people should renounce their homosexuality and seek fulfillment in a “higher” relationship with God. Such systemic instruction can have devastating and life-long hobbling effects on a child’s self worth and his ability to accept himself as okay. As such, I would not want my tax dollars perpetuating these repressive anti gay teachings; instruction that promotes low self esteem and feelings of guilt and inadequacy in the gay person.
Further, the scientific basis for this claim that homosexuals are unconditionally defective, has by no means been objectively established (except within the Catholic church and other religious-based groups). When you examine the roots of this view, you find that it has little more basis than simply that, “the Bible says so.” Increasingly, this postulate claim is fast becoming unpersuasive; particularly as more and more gays emerge from the closet, and prove (as they have and will do more of in the military for example) that it is in fact possible to be quite happy and accepted as a homosexual. As the gay acceptance movement gains momentum, the Catholic church will meet with more and more opposition like this.
Even if you’re not pushing an “orientation change” and just teaching that gays should live a life of abstinence while pursuing holiness, this is still is a form of ineffective sexual repression; one that has caused the church great embarrassment (its supposedly celibate priests still have urges to grope defenseless parishioners). The celibate life styles of said priests, would seem to make people more than less apt to commit deviant sexual acts.
Additionally, the church’s teachings seem to completely ignore the findings of Abraham H. Maslow et al; the fellow who came up with a compelling description of the hierarchy of human needs. The love and sex needs are at level three of five, with the air, water, food (level 1), and safety needs (level 2) only more basic and immediate. Maslow stopped short of saying that we absolutely need love and sexual gratification to survive. But he did hint that without these being fulfilled, it would be monumentally difficult for a human being to achieve complete happiness not to mention his maximum potential. The church is totally oblivious to Maslow’s theories, even though corporations teach Maslow to aspiring managers all the time because of its wide-spread, intuitive acceptance. Maslow’s book: Motivation and Personality completely describes his human needs hierarchy.
Finally, the long-held church view that gays require curing, illustrates an even more fundamental problem with the Christian belief system, that in the end could very well spell their decline into historic insignificance if they do not change. That is: The church changes too little to accommodate new data and philosophies. It dogmatically applies eons-old declarations with relatively little updating (the gay issue being one such teaching, disallowing female priests being another), to modern society. That will get them in more and more trouble (as it is in the gay debate) as the needs of parishioners diverge increasingly from what the Catholic Church willingly accommodates.
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