Few things push my buttons like sanctimonious “love the sinner, hate the sin” declarations. The very concept of sin is a cancer that rots the mind. It is the substitution of morality with dogma. Take homosexuality. There is no moral argument to be made against it. Many have tried, and it always comes down to subjective ickiness, religion, or both. It takes religion to transform an act of love into an “abomination”, to tell people who they are is bad and that they must fight it, which means fighting against themselves. All this, even when they are harming nobody.
For this imaginary and victimless crime, however, LGBTQ people are in reality marginalized, discriminated against, bullied, terrorized, and killed. By implying that there is something wrong with them, those who call homosexuality sinful normalize and justify criminal behavior. This is at best victim blaming. This attitude destroys lives, and contrary to homosexuality, is deeply immoral.
The next step in the perverted reasoning is that gay people are allowed to be the way they are; it’s their behavior that should be fought. Behavior, in this case, being awesome gay sex. I call bullshit on multiple counts.
First, this goes way beyond sex, and is effectively denying love to anyone who’s not straight. Make no mistake, gay marriage, even if it didn’t imply sex, is out of the question. As a LGBTQ person, you are simply denied the right to love in the same way that straight people can.
Second, sex is an integral part of being human. It’s a wonderful, joyful, amazing, and positive experience. Denying an adult person the right to have sex with another consenting adult is actually denying them a part of their humanity. Sexual repression can have some serious consequences on mental health, and can even become full-blown public health crises.
Listening to Christians on this topic however, they would have you think that they are the victims. They claim their religion demands that they reach out and try to convert everyone. They demand special protection for their bigotry, despite evidence that it is actively harmful. We have the moral high ground on this topic, and we should never confuse religiosity for virtue. They have their free speech, but we also have the right to call them out.
If you are a Christian and you claim to love LGBTQ people, please keep your proselytism at bay. Accept people for who they are, keep out of their sex life, and don’t deny them the basic rights everybody else enjoys. This is what true love looks like.