Anyway, as I became more and more Republican, I started doing Letters to the Editor for the local paper. I had one published about gay "rights" being a new kind of discrimination. Shortly thereafter, I had a friend of mine that I hadn't seen in years come down on me like a ton of bricks. I had seen him on and off for years, and while in retrospect there were comments that might have indicated he had "gone to play for the opposing team", it was nothing big. I had suspected he had become gay, but you know, it didn't matter to me. People in this forum can understand what he later couldn't: I thought his behavior was wrong, but I didn't reject him, so I never made an issue of it.
Anyway, once he found out how I viewed his adopted lifestyle, the guy when nuts. I was now a Nazi, a homophobe and worse. When I sent him a copy of my witness about coming to God (family muck, self-hatred, alcohol and food addiction), I received in return a registered letter informing me he had no interest in what I had to say, and that if I contacted him again he would see that I received a restraining order. (He works for Legal Aid...it is my belief that many people who grow up in really troubled home, as in his messily divorced one, end up in clergy, social work, or otherwise "saving the victims".) Even today, I still send him a faithful Christmas card every year...from a postoffice miles from my house in another zipcode, with no return address or signature. He should know that somebody cares about him...even if he's rejected God's love and power in his life.
I have had several friends who were homosexual over the years, and for most, the lifestyle ate them. Like any addiction, it started out as a part of them, but more and more it becomes everything. Every action of their life is seen through it, every choice revolves around it, and the whole choice becomes so all-encompasingly the central focus of their being that if you threaten it, you are cast into the abyss. I cared about my friend, I never rocked the boat in the years I saw him once and awhile, but when he found out I dared disapprove of his choices, that meant I rejected him. And of course, the real fact is that if he didn't drop me out of the lifeboat of his life, he would have to face the fact that I might be right...there might actually be a God who didn't want him doing what he was doing.
I don't hate anybody. But I do hate the sin that they do, and even worse, I hate them trying to re-invent God in an image that says He approves of what they are doing.
As I repeat over and over..."Judge not lest Ye be judged" is not a call that we are to be ostriches, with our head stuck in the sand, never daring to condemn what is wrong in this world. Imagine how it would be if the very Liberals who throw that in our faces followed that advice? No "Save the Whales!" No anti-smoking rallies! No Amnasty International! No Fat Cops! After all, how can they possibly judge other people's sins? Of course, the real answer is that Libs judge people every day. The real answer from Christ's toolbox is to judge people's fruits, and that we should judge the person lovingly, the way God does. I can look at a murderer and say that his actions are evil. As to what God will do with his soul or to punish him is God's job. If you judge a man's stealing to be evil, and tell him so, you may save him from further damaging his life by being thrown in jail. If I ignore his actions, because I can't judge, he goes on to be arrested and thrown in jail...is that kinder to him? The real answer is that I should judge others the way I want to be judged...I want my shortcomings lovingly pointed out to me by God and by those who care about me so I can learn and become a better reflection of Christ. (The Pharisees in Christ's time were getting ready to stone someone...in that context, you can see how Christ admonished them not to judge...in THAT fashion.)
In the end, it comes down to coming from a unstable home, of having conditional love from the world, and of choosing a way of life that "seems right to man" but isn't right with God. And when that one thing becomes everything you are, if the world declares the practice wrong, you have nowhere to flee. It must be the world that is wrong, because, when you are homosexual, it is all about you being more important than anything else in the world...even God.