These people are "in pain" because they know their behavior is abnormal. Forcing others to accept their mental illness as normal will not erase their own guilty feelings.
The great thing about America is not our conservative or liberal tradition, but rather our tradition of compromise
The Founding Fathers did not compromise. The penalty in Virginia when Jefferson was Governor was death. Homosexuality is a damaging behavior. It damages those who practice it mentally and physically. Their health problems are legion. Fortunately we no longer have laws against it as there IS mental health available. However America does not give special rights based on deviant behavior. We DON'T compromise morality.
More importantly they are humans.
With mental health issues. That is not a thing to be approved and glorified.
Our history is littered with gay humans who have greatly advanced our evolution.
Homosexuality is an evolutionary dead end. Homosexual behavior is also a killer. Their lifestyle KILLS.
When the bible is used to justify hatred, we only repeat our past.
No one on FR has ever used the Bible to spread hatred. It is not a book of hatred. It IS a book that talks about sin and overcoming sin.
We only repeat our past? How about repeating Rome's past? They allowed immoral degeneracy and collapsed from within. No outside force could defeat them. Deviancy from within rotted them.
"At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years. At what point, then, is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide."-- Abraham Lincoln