Eve Tushnet has been waxing brilliantly and engagingly on matters of gay identity of late, and has so much to say that can give any of us food for thought:

Some thoughts: First, it’s very clear to me that Catholic teaching is much more affirming of my worth as a person than I might be on my own. Unlike me, Catholic dogma is not moody. It just keeps saying, day after day, that all people are made in the image of God, and that all our failures and cruelties can’t take that away.

Second, Christ can get very hardcore on the subject of what one should hate: "If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple." Any love or longing, no matter how good it might ordinarily be, must be abhorred and put aside if it leads us away from Him.

(snip)

People want, and want very badly, a lot of really awful things. The fact that somebody really, really wants to do something, or believes it’s embedded in and intrinsic to him, doesn’t actually tell me very much about that thing’s moral worth.

But I absolutely, 100% deny that humans are naturally bad or evil, either. If that were true, how could we ever long for or recognize beauty and truth? To be Fallen is to share both the legacy of Adam’s sin, and the memory of his happiness. (See–right up there in the title, I promised you some Augustine, and there it finally is….) Something’s gone wrong with us, yes, but somewhere deep down we do still remember what it was like to be able to love. And by following that submerged and occluded memory, we can learn to accept grace, and be healed, and love truly.

But the thing is… the effects of sin, in our hearts and in the world, are not trivial. They’re deep and subtle and really hard. That’s why people have had to give up things they truly loved, to follow Christ: occupations, relationships, life itself. What I’ve been asked to give up is not that much, compared to the sacrifices of others.

Go read it all, and the post from a few days ago that’s on the same topic. God bless her.