On homosexuality, the ‘yuck factor’ is not enough
In our increasingly superficial culture, many moral decisions are made based on surface appearances, emotional reactions to those appearances, and an alarming lack of intellectual or volitional activity to check those emotional reactions. This has serious ramifications for all of us, who want to evangelize the larger society of which we are a part. Whereas many of the issues we might consider as specimens of this would be on the “left” side of the cultural divide — abortion, contraception, divorce, etc. — I will focus on only one issue, and keep myself to censuring those on the “right” side of that divide. (And the word “right” has a double meaning here.) The issue is homosexuality. I am taking issue with those who are fundamentally correct in opposing the vice, but inadequately rooted in their principles and therefore unreliable in their actions. The sin of Sodom is a grave matter, which means that to commit it is a sin, i.e., something so heinous that one instance of it a