Is innate homophobia destroying Christian churches?
All the polls show that in western countries church attendance is declining and the “no particular religion” (sometimes called nones) is increasing. Most of this sector is not atheist but composed of people who have lost their allegiance to a church. This is happening for a reason or reasons and one treason is the attitude of most religious denominations toward the LGBTQ+ community. Most sects have a negative view of homosexuality and oppose same sex marriage which they usually write as “marriage”.
This opposition is usually cloaked as a “love the sinner; hate the sin” attitude, which may make sense to the church but not to the supposed “sinner”. People who are attracted to their own sex don’t find much comfort in an outlook, based on the writings of a small, ancient tribe, don’t find much comfort in t5he idea that the organization which supposedly loves you would deny you any sexual outlet. Even masturbation is considered a “sin”.
As an example of a church view on homosexuality here is a quotation from the Roman Catholic catechism:
Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.” They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.
Other sects have basically the same viewpoint.
Is the decline in church membership caused in part by the negative view of homosexuality?
Why do churches cling to this negative attitude when society is either positive or at least neutral?
This Stylem 10/6