“Doesn't the Church call LGBTQ people sinners and hate them?”

🔥The question: “Can a gay person, or someone struggling over their gender, be respected just as they are?”

🛡️The Church's answer: Yes — everyone must be respected as a human being just as they are, and protected from insult and violence. But sexual orientation and gender identity, tied together in the question, are different matters and must not be lumped into a single sentence. The Church distinguishes sexual attraction itself from freely chosen acts, and asks chastity and love of every believer. On gender, she sees the body and sexuality as gifts of God, while holding that no one who is in distress over their own body and identity may be mocked or forced to change, and that they should receive safe and professional help. Respecting a person does not mean automatically agreeing with every thought and action — but still less does it mean that safety, legal rights, friendship and care may be made conditional.

🎨An analogy — not a debate topic but a person standing in front of you

If a classroom treats a classmate's life as nothing but a for-and-against debate while that classmate is sitting there, you can lose the person in the act of getting the answer right. Doctrine always has to be spoken to someone with a name, a face and wounds.

The analogy shows that a person's dignity and safety have to come before the doctrinal debate. It does not mean burying hard doctrinal and ethical questions; it means talking them through honestly, in a way that does not turn the people concerned into objects.

🕯️First, the admission: Christians have jeered at and insulted LGBTQ people, driven them out of their families and communities, and treated violence and harassment as no great matter. Using the Church's language as a weapon, and so deepening their loneliness and mental suffering, was wrong too. No doctrine permits hatred, violence or unjust discrimination.

🧐If they press further: “If you say you respect me and then ask me to agree with the doctrine, isn't that fake respect?” — Respect does not mean agreeing with every claim, but neither does it make a person's safety, legal rights, friendship and care conditional. Debate the hard doctrine honestly, and refuse mockery, coercion, forced treatment and violence.

✨In one sentence: “Catholic sexual ethics leaves real questions open, but damaging the human dignity of LGBTQ people and subjecting them to insult, violence or unjust discrimination is plainly wrong.”