Short article: Where religions stand on gay issues

[Chip]

Ran across this article It's short but I hadn't seen anyone attempt to pull together the views of different groups.

I note it doesn't address any non-western religions, and leaves out even a lot of common religions in the US, but I wonder, for those more in the know than I, how accurate the article is?

[Ben]

It doesn't really need to be said that things are a whole lot deeper than said there but I think it gives an okay overview over a small number of Christian denominations and as you said, it is a tad Eurocentric.

I just want to address the whole Catholic thing. People are so quick to throw aside the Catholic Church as intolerant and completely frozen in time.
If you read about the progress the Church has made since the late 1800s to today in terms of meeting the modern world (eg. Gaudium et Spes—one of four constitutions drawn up in the second Vatican council which was all about the modern world), then you'll see how the Church absolutely has made progressive moves over the past 100 years. Now it's unfortunate that gay rights haven't really been given much attention beyond the fringes of Catholicism, but I place that down to the less progressive stance taken by John Paul II and our Benedict. I am absolutely positive that if another progressive Pope like John XXIII calls another council to continue the spirit of reconciliation and renewal put forward in the 60s, then we will see the beginnings of movement in the Catholic Church towards the top end of the hierarchy accepting same-sex relationships and trying to reconcile themselves with the general pro-homosexuality stance of the West. Catholicism is a very very very very important denomination to European history and to Europe today and it's not right that people judge it so easily.

Obviously there are a load of other religions in this debate. Islam in particular—people are ready to throw judgment over Islam even more easily than they are over Catholicism it seems. Then there are the East Asian and Indian religions, Indigenous beliefs and these new-age spiritualities. So it has missed out the majority of religious believers, but it's a swift overview of the religions we're most likely to come across~