Gay and Catholic

I think this piece at the slanty USCatholic is well worth your read.

I don't like the dichotomy that the author sets up between "creed" and "catechism," and I don't like that in the heirarchy of what he says he gains from his membership in the Body of Christ he seems to value , (with the wphrase, "most of all,") what amounts to fellowship over the Real Presence, but I do like that for once a gay Catholic leaves the issue of sinful activity out of it.

Is he active or not? don't know, don't care, in this context it is irrelevant.

He speaks of "deciding what are the battles you’re willing to fight with it and what are the battles you’re willing to fight with yourself," and in charity how can we assume other than that one of those battles with himself is for winning the prize of chastity?
You can present as gay without presenting as sinning.
Some people object to this analogy, but I would compare it to not hiding the fact that yes, I'm an alcoholic, and no, I'm sober.

Or in my case, yes, I'm bitchy, and I'm working hard to keep my mouth shut.

We don't have to get into the yes, important, but sometimes over-emphasized matter of scandal. (Flamboyance has it's price. I have learned that in matters that have nothing whatever to do with sexuality, see above.)

What IS relevant is that he is reminding the Church, that's all of us, of the loving inclusivity of PERSONS, not beliefs, not actions but persons, ALL persons, that is demanded of us.

Charity.

Active Love.

I’m a sinner just like everyone else at my parish, but my sin isn’t my homosexuality. The sinfulness of my being gay is that it tempted me, allowed me—encouraged me, really—to think that I was somehow set off from the rest of society, that I wasn’t really part of the world. The sin of my homosexuality is that it led me to believe lies—deadly, soul-killing lies—a sin for which I am indeed heartily sorry. But by the grace of God I’ve forgiven the people who told me those lies, and I’ve forgiven myself for believing them.

Incidentally, I lived ofr a time in a socially ultra-conservative small  town, attending exactly the sort of parish you'd expect in such a place, where one of the daily Mass-goers was a charming man who wore very heavy eye-liner.
He was much beloved by the rest of the daily Mass community, (often a tighter, more close-knit "community," than the rest of a parish could ever dream of being,)  despite the fact, as he told it to me, that they tut-tutted a bit at one of his greatest joys -- zooming  around town on his Harley in "pony-skin a***less chaps."

I never saw it, must have been quite a sight with his waist-length blond hair.

Now that I think of it, he might have looked a bit elfin... elven?