Anti-gay Ugandan bill

I thought the Ugandan bill that gives the death penalty to homosexuals was a joke, until one of my friends linked to a petition site and I got wrapped up in the whole thing. I'm just... it's coming from both sides, really. On the one hand there are the ultraliberals that make me want to just sit and stare at the walls, depressed at the state that humanity has come to--that it's okay to be abortionist, that it's okay to treat divorce as casually as any old break up, that it's okay to show things on tv that you can't watch with your family without blushing and wanting to close your eyes. On the other hand there are these extreme conservatives, who want to protect the "cohesion of African families" by extending the criminalization of homosexuality, including and up to the death penalty. Who want to uphold ideals by sacrificing human dignity and freedom.

I do believe that there are plenty of things that damage the family as a social unit. I believe that the current climate of promiscuity has contributed to this--leading down a slippery slope of teenage pregnancies, increased abortion rates and sexually transmitted disease, child pornography, human trafficking, and the like. Society has made all of these things, to some extent, acceptable. Do I wish they'd disappear? Sure, because I can't stand to see holy purity and prudence stepped on at every turn, and to see marriages breaking up easily because people knew from the very beginning that there was a way out.

However, as a Catholic, the most basic premise of my faith--and here no sane Catholic will contradict me--is that people have free will; this freedom, not license, comes with responsibilities and the knowledge that you are free to choose, but whatever choice you make will have consequences. I have the choice to turn away from God or to fall in love with Him, and it is a personal choice; nobody can force me, and I won't let them; more importantly, I can never force others to believe in the same things, primarily because of freedom, but also because faith itself is a gift and not a fruit of coercion. Another consequence of this freedom is that I must respect the choices others make; I might disagree with my classmates on the RH bill or similar topics, but I would be the first to defend their right to make their own informed decisions and to express them. I might not be comfortable with homosexuality, but I would never ever ostracize or penalize somebody for their sexual orientation.

Others brand Catholics as extremely close-minded, along with all those hot-blooded other Christians, all set to smite those who do not match their ideas of what is good--homosexuals included. But if you really studied the Catholic stand on homosexuality, you would see that actually, Catholicism is one of the few religions in the world that truly respect a person's freedom and his ability to make his own choices. Whether these choices are misguided or not is a matter of moral truth--and the consequences of our moral decisions will always be there--but that doesn't change the fact that each person comes equipped with intelligence and will, both of which can be educated and enlightened, and that each person has an inviolable dignity.

Christianity is a religion of love. It bothers me that we should be branded as haters, and sometimes with good reason--because we can be overenthusiastic and self-righteous and defensive, feeling that society is beating us down on all sides. I know because I've been there, and sometimes I can still be all of these things. But what matters, before anything else, is that I and my fellow Catholics should remember charity. To fight for our beliefs--to picket, if necessary--but to know that there is a line we can't cross; we can only do so much; to cross over to violation of human rights is to contradict our own objectives. Charity before anything else, understanding before anything else.

It's a good reminder for me. And it would be good to remind the legislators at Uganda, too.