The nation’s increasingly visible and influential gay community embraces the notion of sexual orientation as an innate, immutable characteristic, like left-handedness or eye color

Many of my left handed elders were forced to change into right handers, and us lefties still have to learn to live in a right handed world, and there are contact lens, so their notion of comparison is rather strange.

Very true Jerry. When you don’t have a family to support, there’s a lot of extra discretionary cash lying around.

There’s also a certain amount of disposable income in the homosexual community that allows this community to be vocal.

which reminds of this poem:

Poem in Straight Line
by Alvaro de Campos

I never met someone who has been beaten.
All my acquaintances have been champions in everything.

And I, so many times a scum, so many times a pig, so many times vile,
I, so many times unjustifiably a parasite,
Inexcusably filthy,
I, who so many times have not had the patience to take a bath,
I, who so many times have been ridiculous, absurd,
Who have tangled my feet publically in the carpets of etiquette,
Who have been grotesque, petty, submissive and arrogant,
Who have suffered humiliations silently,
Who, when I have not been silent, have been even more ridicule,
I, who have been comical to hotel maids,
I, who have felt the blinking of bellboys,
I, who have suffered financial shame, borrowed without paying,
I, who when the punch came, ducked
Away from the possibility of the punch;
I, who have suffered the anguish of the small ridiculous things,
I realize that in this I have no peer in the world.

None who I know and who talk to me
None of them had a ridiculous act, never a humiliation,
They have never been but princes – all of them princes – in life…

I wish I could hear from someone a human voice
Who confessed not a sin, but an infamy;
Who told not about a violence, but a cowardice!
No, they are nothing less than Ideal, if I hear them and if they speak to me.
Who in this wide world can confess to me they have been vile?

O princes, my brethren,
Geez, I am fed up of demigods!
Where are there people in this world?

Perchance am I alone in being vile and in error on this Earth?

They may have been not loved by women,
They could have been betrayed – but ridiculous? Never!
I, who have been ridiculous without having been betrayed,
How can I speak to my superiors without hesitating?
I, who have been vile, literally vile,
Vile in the petty and despicable sense of vileness.

That’s very true and an excellente comparison. People shun the compulsion to visible sins in others and many times indulge in their own not-so-visible sins. Also, it seems that there are some sins that are acceptable, while others are not. Gossip, crankiness, acedia, coldness of faith, pride, vanity, gluttony, sometimes even anger,sexual misbehaviour that is kept under the carpet, love of wealth and comfort all seem to be sins we can “live with”, while the more explicit sins, or those that weaken the victim socially instead of making them social predators, these are to be severely excluded. Pusilanimous subservience to the strong, arrogant spite to the weak. Are we not falling into the parable of the two debtors?

I think it’s up to the person to decide if they will take a therapy and engage in one of the programs that try to heal the homossexual behaviour or if they will go for a life of celibacy. I don’t see anything particular fundamentalist about this.

In my opinion, there are several conditions, of which homosexuality is but one, that are like alcoholism or cleptomania: a sinful action, for whatever reason, genetic, biological, social, psychological or spiritual, has collapsed into a compulsion. In fact, I understand the Fathers of the Church do note this level of seriousness in the development of sin.

Like a missing arm, these conditions can arise for several reasons, natural and accidental, while the healthy state comes only under very strict limits: you can get a disease for many causes, while the healthy state needs healthy genetics, nutrition, environment, etc etc.

Therefore, in some cases it may be true that the person could get healed with willpower and support (like some alcoholics can live a healthy life under certain restrictions). But it may also be true that in some cases the issue may be more serious and cannot be reverted at all. Of course that God can heal everything, but still there are millions of people with a number of conditions that are not healed. It’s not up to us to put God against the wall on that. What we can and should do is treat well and with understanding all those how are not healed of their bodily, mental or spiritual conditions, which does not mean giving support to them in indulging in their condition just because it is not being healed.

Perhaps there appear to be more gays in the U.S. because gays tend to be very vocal in often expressing their rights to be gay.