The Only Unnatural Acts Are Those Which Cannnot Physically Be Performed

In the Bible Belt where I grew up, just about everything was a sin. Any kind of sex or human contact was sinful. The only human contact not a sin was (a) a firm handshake, and (b) occasional missionary position intercourse between husband and wife, provided that neither party took any pleasure in it and they apologized to one another right away. All earthly pleasure was sin.

I take a different view on sin nowadays. I work off the Golden Rule and the commandment to love God and to love your neighbor as you love yourself. If someone’s activity does not implicate either love of God or love of others, I don’t reckon that it is a sin. Even if it is a sin, I don’t reckon it is any of my business, and it is not my job to go around condemning people for “sins” that don’t affect anyone but the “sinners”. To me, whatever folks consensually do to one another in the privacy of their homes is probably not a sin and is definitely none of my business. It would not be very loving for me to try to impose my views on such private matters on others.

In church, for instance, some of my fellow parishioners live in households with other people, many in state sanctioned marriages. They might touch one another and take pleasure in it. Good for them, say I. They might even engage in sexual activities that I myself would not enjoy and that I would be uncomfortable with. Maybe, the husband is a leather slave or some such thing. It wouldn’t be very loving of me to reject them because I don’t condone the way they play with each other, assuming that I would even know about it. I probably wouldn’t know, but the possibility exists that my friends have some exotic preferences, and it would be uncharitable for me to go around condemning sexual behaviors even in a hypothetical way. Loving my neighbors means wanting them to have all the joy and pleasure they can get. I sincerely hope that people can enjoy sex without all the guilt and baggage that I was loaded up with.

God made human contact pleasurable, presumably so that we might take pleasure in it, not as a cruel temptation. No act of non-violent physical contact, in and of itself, is sinful. The context in which the contact takes place may render it sinful, as in a situation in which it is not entirely consensual. One might be addicted to sex and suffer in other areas of life as a consequence. One’s marriage might be harmed by sexual infidelity. Making a pass at a friend’s wife might be unwelcome and uncharitable.

Those folks who like to go around declaring that "God hates fags" are, in my view, terribly misguided. If there were no gays, do you suppose that they would go around declaring that "God hates anything but the missionary position"? They would have to find someone's business to mind, since they clearly cannot mind their own.