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4:1–2

CHAPTER 10
    Homosexuality
    These days, the issue of homosexuality is constantly present in the media and in our culture. As a result, many now hold the view that homosexual activity is just as acceptable and natural as heterosexual activity. But in spite of those Catholics who commit homosexual sins, the Church remains steadfast in her teaching: “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination” (Leviticus 18:22).
    While affirming the human dignity of homosexuals as men and women whom God loves and has made in his image, the Church also affirms the reality that deliberate homosexual activity is gravely sinful. Homosexuality involves a violation of natural law. When we violate God’s laws, we violate our very humanity by misusing the faculties with which he entrusted us, such as our sexuality and procreative abilities.
    The Catechism explains:
     
Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, [cf. Gen 19:1-29; Rom  1:24-27; 1 Cor 6:10; 1 Tim 1:10] tradition has always declared that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered” [CDF, Persona humana 8]. They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved. ( CCC, 2357) 1
     
    In the Old Covenant, homosexual activity was punishable by death. “If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death, their blood is upon them” (Leviticus 20:13). Thankfully, in the New Covenant that punishment no longer applies, but the Church reminds us of an even worse eternal punishment that awaits those (whether homosexual or heterosexual) who refuse to repent and turn from their sins.
     
We know that the judgment of God rightly falls upon those who do such things. Do you suppose, O man, that when you judge those who do such things and yet do them yourself, you will escape the judgment of God? Or do you presume upon the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience? Do you not know that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? But by your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed. For he will render to every man according to his works: to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; but for those who are factious and do not obey the truth, but obey wickedness, there will be wrath and fury. (Romans 2:2–8)
     
    Saint Paul warned: “For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. Their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural, and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in their own persons the due penalty for their error” (Romans 1:26–27; see 1:18–22).
    Saint Peter wrote:
     
God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to pits of nether gloom to be kept until the judgment...he did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven other persons, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly...by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes he condemned them to extinction and made them an example to those who were to be ungodly (2 Peter 2:4–6).
     
    Some proponents of homosexuality try to twist the meaning of the account of the homosexual sins of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 19:1–14. In this famous episode, a