Sexual Orientation?

[PanzerJaeger]

It's not the "characteristic", it's the behavior. Promiscuity and pre-marital sex are universally frowned on by any Christian denomination I know of. This applies to hetero or homosexuals.

Of course, there are those who take it to a hypocritical extreme and use it as an excuse for harsh treatment- but you can't damn an entire religion for a minority that twist its teachings

Fair enough. My personal involvement has definitely left me with a less than objective stance. It is unfortunate to me that most modern Christian denominations selectively apply Leviticus, but I should not have lumped all of them together.

I'm glad you came to that conclusion that not only is it not a choice but that your homosexual friend was in fact a better man then those who tout that homosexuality is terrible (AKA most religious people).

My high school friends were all homophobic to an extreme measure (although since these were players on the football team, they did a lot of homoerotic things to each other as "pranks"). When people we all knew who didn't fit the stereotype came out sophomore, junior and senior year their bigotry simply found more excuses for them to look down at gays. Before they would say it was a choice and that they should just stop choosing to "suck ****", then when it became obvious it's who you are and not a choice they decided to go down the Social Darwinism path and claimed that a scientific journal had published a study where a gene altered in mice had "turned them gay". So their logic became that it wasn't a choice but instead their gayness was a genetic abnormality or "defect" because obviously a gene is defective if it prevents them from procreating and this "gay gene" does that so they are simply "defective" people with a neurological disorder. Yeah, I'm glad I am 400 miles away from those bigots now.

That is all too often the case in high schools across the country. The recent spate of gay teen suicides seems to finally be shedding some light on the issue, though.