Not long ago, a likable, talented high school senior was tackled in a varsity football game, hit the ground awkwardly, and never got up under his own power. Paralyzed from the neck down, he can't do anything physical by himself but breathe, talk and blink his eyelids.

Consider that situation for a moment: Something he didn't choose has made him very different from most people in some ways. He's not different in every way; that's important to remember. In most ways he's just like everyone else. He laughs, cries, gets excited, gets depressed; needs friends, likes music, enjoys food, watches television, learns and forgets and relearns—all the things that human beings do without moving their arms and legs.

But in some ways he's different—ways that many of his peers consider most important. For example, he doesn't drive to a girl's house and take her out on a date. He's not likely to become a husband or a father. He didn't plan, ask for, or choose this situation. And he can't do anything to change it.

What would you do if you saw and heard someone laughing and making fun of the fact that he can't move? What would you think of someone who called him crude names for "paralyzed"? What do you think of the idea that if he were a decent person and really wanted to, he could straighten out and be "normal" like everybody else?

Finally, how would you feel if you knew he was beginning to believe the insults and be convinced that he's pretty worthless—even a bad person?

Now let's talk about another likable, talented young person. Let's call him Bill. He could easily be a classmate of the first young man. Because of something he didn't choose either, Bill is also different from most people in one way: He's gay.

Many people would have problems with that opening example. I'll admit that it's very imperfect.

Many gay people would be upset about being compared to someone who's paralyzed. "Being paralyzed is a tragic loss," they would say. "Being gay is not tragic, and it's not a loss. It's a different but equally good way of being a person." That's the strong, pro-gay position.

Some heterosexual, or "straight," people would object to the example but for different reasons: "When a person is paralyzed, that's a shame. When a person is gay, that's disgusting." That's the strong anti-gay position.

The comparison is intended only to illustrate two aspects of being gay which are easy to forget but important to remember. First, gay people do not make a deliberate choice about their sexuality. Straight people don't either. A person's sexual orientation is not like checking out a Camaro and a Mustang and then choosing one or the other. Second, gay people are far more like everyone else than they are different.

Like the first young man, Bill did not design or choose his situation. And he can't do anything to change it. But if people find out that Bill is gay, he won't get waves of sympathy and understanding. From many people he'll get a lot of the opposite. Even if he doesn't act on his feelings—even if he doesn't do anything sexual at all—many people will treat him worse than if he cheated on exams, robbed a store, did drugs—or all of those. You know what he's heard on the bus and in the corridors at his high school.

Like the first young man, Bill is far more like others than different. But to many people, his one difference makes all the difference.

So he tells no one. He forces a laugh along with the rest of the group when he hears things like, "Did you hear the story about the fag who...." and, "There were these two lesbians, see, and one morning...." He laughs to keep up appearances, but it's about as funny to him as a gift-wrapped baseball glove would be to the young man who's paralyzed.

Inside he's confused and hurt. He can't change his feelings and they seem normal to him. But almost everybody says those feelings are sick, dirty, evil, almost too bad for words. So he's often very angry too, without knowing who should be the target of his anger. Himself? His parents or other people in his background? His classmates and society in general? God?

What do we know?

This Update is about homosexuality—being gay. That's not a comfortable topic for many people; we often laugh at and put down things that are uncomfortable.

But let's decide to make putdowns and crude laughter off-limits. Like many straight people, I used to tell jokes about "queers." I used to tell jokes about black people and people who get drunk and people of other nationalities and women drivers, too. Now I'm sorry that I did. They're all cheap shots.

In spite of considerable study and research, there is no definite conclusion or even much agreement about what causes homosexuality. Some recent research seems to be leaning in the direction of genetics. It may be similar to the way some people are born with a genetic disposition toward being left-handed or right-handed. For right now, the cause makes little difference. We're concerned with how to approach the facts and the situation as Catholic Christians.

It used to be assumed that homosexuality affected only a very few, very sick, very dangerous people. It was assumed that these people would try to take sexual advantages of nearly anyone of their own sex whom they could, especially children. It was assumed that their moral character was so warped they couldn't be trusted to make good decisions of any kind.

None of this is true. About 10 percent of people—that's more than a very few—are basically homosexual. They don't feel huge waves of sexual passion every time they look at or touch someone of the same sex, any more than straight people instantly want to go to bed with persons of the opposite sex they see or hug. Recent studies show that most child molesting—including young boys—is done primarily by heterosexual people. And gay people have responsibly filled just about every occupation there is, including professional football.

Some people, especially in their teens, think they're gay or suspect they may be, when they aren't. The following are not proof of being gay: 1) Strong feelings of friendship and affection toward others of the same sex. These are actually a sign of healthy emotional development; 2) Isolated homosexual experiences. These can happen out of pressure from the other person, out of curiosity, even out of loneliness; 3) Not dating the opposite sex. Many people simply do not develop an active social life until much later than others.

Is it wrong?

"But isn't homosexuality wrong? I don't mean just different. I mean sinful. Isn't that what the Bible says and what the Church teaches?"

Christians, straight or gay, must consider sexuality in the light of God's word. That's not picking on sex. Christians are called to look at everything—politics, poverty, business, human rights, the media, everything—in the light of God's word.

Beyond question, most religious traditions have not approved of homosexual actions. We need to be clear on what that means, what it doesn't mean, and why.

First of all, it does not give straight people reason to feel superior and self-righteous. ("God likes us straight people because we're normal; he can't stand you sickos.") That's using God to rate oneself above others—which is something God doesn't like. (The only people who prompted real fury from Jesus were those who figured they had it so together that God would see them as O.K. and others as inferior.)

The Catholic Church's teaching makes a big distinction between being homosexual in "orientation," or sexual attraction, and doing homosexual actions. The Church clearly states that it's not sinful to be homosexual, to feel homosexual attractions. That's a condition beyond the individual's control. And any feelings, all by themselves, even strong sexual feelings, are neither right nor wrong. They're a bit like height and skin color. They simply are.

Right and wrong are matters of actions—what we do or fail to do. Actions, of course, are often the results of feelings; but they're not the same thing as feelings.

A heterosexual person may feel that homosexual activity is so strange it must be wrong. But "strangeness" isn't enough to base a moral judgment on. A gay person is extremely concerned with why the Church puts a "wrong" label on things which, to him or her, don't even seem strange.

Sex is strong stuff

Every member of the Church should try to understand the current state of Church teaching on a matter which causes such publicity and such pain for so many people. To explain it in the space we have here isn't going to be easy.

The Catholic tradition sees two purposes in human sexuality: One is the celebration and strengthening of love between husband and wife; the other is the procreation of new human life.

Anyone who's taken a junior high biology course knows that sperm cell + egg cell = baby. But the Catholic tradition says that this is more than a basic biological fact. It's a clue, a message placed by God within human bodies, about one of the central purposes and the meaning of sex. The possibility of creating new life is not just an added feature of human sexuality—it's part of it. Sex and its power to create new human life are linked together so closely that you can't completely separate them over the long run. So a sexual relationship, Catholic tradition says, must be open to the creation of a new human life—and that's impossible, of course, with homosexual sharing.

Moreover, in spite of recent media efforts to brainwash us into believing that sex is just another fun activity open to anybody, that's not how Christians have regarded it down through 2,000 years. Our heritage says that sex should be the expression of the total giving and sharing between two people who have promised themselves to each other forever. Most Christians see that promise as something which takes place between opposite sexes, a relationship we call marriage.

Catholic belief in particular regards marriage as more than even a very serious agreement between a man and a woman. The Catholic faith sees marriage, including married sexual love, as a sacrament, a relationship which literally makes Christ present. A relationship between two people of the same sex is not marriage, of course, and therefore it is unable to be a sacrament in that traditional sense.

The Bible itself has little to say about homosexual activity as such, certainly less than you might expect given today's publicity, and extremely little compared to the attention the Bible gives other issues. There are a few verses where homosexual actions seem to be singled out and labeled wrong precisely for being homosexual. The largest section is Genesis 19:1-11. This story about the town of Sodom is an extremely ancient piece of Bible writing. As with other such pieces, we may need the help of good Scripture scholars to determine exactly the message it contains.

Other verses which mention homosexual actions are Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13, 1 Corinthians 6:9, Romans 1:18-32, and 1 Timothy 1:10. Some recent opinions say that some of those passages may not be talking directly about the homosexual aspect of the actions involved, but about their connection with other things, such as the pagan worship of the time.

But the bottom line of Church teaching on gay sexual activity is simply: Don't. Ever. This is called lifelong abstinence, or a celibate lifestyle.

Straight people have no problem with this because it affects them about as much as a traffic law passed by a city on the other side of the world. A few may even find satisfaction in it: "Serves 'em right for being weird—they don't deserve to have any fun." In terms of Christian maturity, that attitude is still in spiritual diapers.

Many gay people of course will say it isn't fair. Their feelings run somewhat like this: "Sex is not small stuff. The Church itself says that sex is one of the strongest, deepest elements of being human. But it's off-limits to us. We think it's fine to choose to live without a sexual relationship in order to follow a life you feel called to, or feel is right for you. If you can handle that, whether you're straight or gay, wonderful.

"But what if you don't choose to live without a loving, sexual fulfillment? What if you feel that it's something deep within you that can't simply be shut off? And we're not talking about cheap, one-night stands, or even six-month stands. We're talking about sex expressing genuine, permanently committed love."

What's fair?

They're right: It isn't fair at all if we believe that everyone has a right to the basic good things which God placed within creation and within human nature.

But another point of view would say that this is not a completely fair world—sexually and otherwise—and that gay people are not the only ones who are called to live without physical sex. So is everyone who isn't married. That includes a lot of straight people who would like to be married but, for whatever reason, haven't been asked or haven't found a partner.

And there are far worse injustices than having to go to bed without sex. Every night millions of people go to bed without shelter, without food, without freedom, without safety—and without hope for ever having them.

The young man in our opening example certainly has a right to walk and move. But he can't. His physical freedom to move has been taken away in most of his body. That's unfair—but it's also the way things are.

Church teaching says that just as he is not physically able or free to walk and move, gay people are not morally able or free to engage in sexual activity. Even though it may be unfair from a certain standpoint, that's also the way things are. Traditional spirituality also says that God will provide the strength for whatever difficulty anyone must bear.

One thing is certain: Hating and tearing apart must stop. If Jesus said something specifically about gay sex, the Gospels did not record it. But they recorded one thing after another which Jesus taught, both by word and by example, about accepting and loving other people. Jesus himself seemed to get along best with those whom polite, officially O. K. society regarded as scum and outcasts. Even when Jesus didn't accept someone's actions, he still extended acceptance and love to the person.

Some gay people need to learn acceptance too—of themselves. Since the world is mostly heterosexual, and because traditional Christian teaching on sexuality seems contrary to their feelings, it's easy to conclude that they really aren't very good human beings.

God holds all people responsible for their actions, sexual and otherwise. But God loves everyone—equally. God respects the dignity and worth of each person. Christians are called to channel and extend that love and respect to all people, "regardless of race, color, creed, or national origin," as we often say—and regardless of sexual orientation, too.

Jim Auer, author of two other Youth Updates and of several Leader's Guides to accompany them, has been married 19 years to "one wonderful wife" and is the father of "two neat teenagers."

Members of Youth Update's Advisory Board who previewed this issue are Becky Ahlers, 14; Kimberly Carter, 17; and Rick Saltsman, 17. Questions from readers are submitted through the board and answered by the author.