The Pope on Homosexuality
The Pope has criticised some of his own bishops because they still hold that sodomy should be regarded as a crime. He called laws which criminalise sodomite behaviour “unjust”, saying that “being homosexual isn’t a crime”. Bishops who support such laws or who appear to discriminate against sodomites must “have a process of conversion” in their attitudes. There are 67 countries in the world where legislation against sodomy is in place. In one of these – the USA – more than a dozen states have laws in place forbidding sodomy, even though the US Supreme Court has ruled them unconstitutional.
Yet, with the dissimulation characteristic of the Papacy, the Pope still maintains that homosexuality is a sin. “It’s not a crime”, he says. “Yes, but it’s a sin”. Admitting that there are certain general distinctions between sins and crimes, one may still query how genuinely the Pope believes sodomy even to be a sin when he maintains that God loves homosexuals “as they are”.
The Word of God teaches that sodomy has its root in the corruption of the human heart and that its fruit, in an evil and deeply immoral lifestyle, is a heinous, unnatural sin against God and against man which, if not repented of and forsaken, will lead to eternal condemnation in hell (Rom 1:26,27,32). Scripture (1 Ki 22:46; 2 Ki 23:7) furthermore shows that the open manifestation of that lifestyle represents such a flagrant danger to the moral wellbeing of society that it ought to be dealt with by the civil authorities as a crime, as it was in Britain until 1967, under the term of “gross indecency”.
(Rev) A W MacColl