'God Hates Gays'?!?!?

Being a former catholic school attendee, the issue of gay rights is familiar topic to me. My parents growing up always told me that everyone was different and to treat those differences with respect. Attending a catholic school, I met a classmate in my government class who was anti-gay rights and was not about to change his mind. When the two of us were paired to debate the question of legalizing gay marriage, he came at me with the direct quote, "if I had two dads, I would never be comfortable in my own house." His parents were devout catholics and believed every word of the bible to be true. While my parents are catholic, they take the bible less literally and choose to practice more the rituals of faith and to find a different or more personal meaning from what is presented to us as the 'catholic belief system'. Therefore the two of us were raised a little differently. He believed that because you could not procreate, being gay was against God's will. He also believed that gay people chose to be that way and that they were just confused and would eventually change back to being heterosexual.

I, on the other hand, choose to look at the piece of the bible that says 'everyone's equal', and try to stand by that for most of my beliefs. I live with two homosexual people, and this topic has come up frequently because they experience 'bullying' almost daily. I believe that you can love/have sex with/ marry/ have kids with/ etc. WHOEVER YOU WANT. A lot of people are just uncomfortable with this type of relationship and so they see it as wrong. It is similar to the controversy of mixed racial couples (more controversial back in time) and how some people (most likely powerful, influential, "intelligent" people) say this wrong and unacceptable and society either chooses to take that opinion or choose another. Similar to the way we examined the media as being controlled by a powerful group of people, I believe that the catholic church is run by a bunch of powerful rich men who create a universal belief system based on how they see the world. Since the idea of homosexuality has been negative in the catholic church over time, many catholics believe this truly is God's will, he doesn't want homosexuality. The media also often portrays the stereotypical gay as someone super flamboyant and sometimes over-the-top, and this may be all some people are subjected to which makes them influenced in a certain way. Because of the fact that I grew up being accepting of this type of relationship, I am comfortable with it, but I do understand why people have different opinions. This becomes an issue when homosexual couples want to continue their relationship in the catholic church, because they can't. Instead of having such strong opinions against each other, I think that anti and pro-gay individuals should come to some sort of consensus, at least with the sacramental piece. Gays should be able to be legally married, whether or not everyone is in support of it. There are many things in life we will disagree with, and it is just not fair to inhibit someone's life because the media or the catholic church tell us its wrong. I attended a transgender panel this year for my biology class and one thing that really struck me is when one of the people on the panel talked about how people always ask "when did you know you were _____(gay, transgender,bisexual, etc.) and her reply was "well when did you know you were straight?" I feel like a lot of people just decide they are because that is what society tells us to do. But What I believe EVERYONE (including myself) needs to do is to make that decision without the influence of others or the media or our religion. This will at least provide a better understanding of why there are people that choose to love someone of the same sex.