Privileged Sins?
Have you noticed that when even the most orthodox and conservative Christian writers set about defending Christian teaching about “homosexuality” and “transgenderism,” they are fastidiously careful to treat the perpetrators of the sin of Sodom with surpassing gentleness and delicacy? This is not surprising among Catholics, since even the Catechism of the Catholic Church admonishes the faithful that “men and women” with “deep-seated homosexual tendencies . . . do not choose their homosexual condition. . . . They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided” (#2358).
Now this is all undeniably true, because, while we are all sinners, we are all created in God’s image and likeness and are therefore all worthy of respect. But I cannot think of any other group of sinners, except perhaps divorced and remarried Catholics, who are treated with such deference.
I spent a fair portion of my boyhood in the deep South and was acquainted with—nay, related to—a substantial number of men and women who favored racial segregation. They were burdened with “deep-seated” racial prejudice, which they certainly did not choose, since it was part of the very air they breathed from their earliest childhood. Most of those with whom I kept up eventually repented and put their prejudicial attitudes behind them, motivated in large part by the pressure of increasing and constant reminders of the injustice of their view. I can only wonder how many would have come round had their churches constantly reminded them of their special status and encouraged them to be proud of their identity as white people and to associate with others who shared this attitude.
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R. V. Young is Professor of English Emeritus at North Carolina State University, and a former editor of Modern Age: A Quarterly Review. His Shakespeare & the Idea of Western Civilization is forthcoming in January from Catholic University of America Press. He and his wife are parishioners at Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Dunedin, Florida. They have five grown children, 15 grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren. He is a senior editor of Touchstone.
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