They want to have their cake and eat it.

@Midlifemale How is homophobia just "common sense"? The Catholic church is a private club. The Church of England has a special status as the official church. As I said in my OP, it should give up its special status and become just another private club.

@Midlifemale I'm all for it!!! No need for deviance in religion.

@Midlifemale What in the world makes you think the Catholic church won't employ gay people?

[quote]Fewer than about 10 priests in the United States have dared to come out publicly. But gay men probably make up at least 30 to 40 percent of the American Catholic clergy, according to dozens of estimates from gay priests themselves and researchers. Some priests say the number is closer to 75 percent. One priest in Wisconsin said he assumed every priest was gay unless he knows for a fact he is not. A priest in Florida put it this way: “A third are gay, a third are straight and a third don’t know what the hell they are.”[/quote]
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/17/us/it-is-not-a-closet-it-is-a-cage-gay-catholic-priests-speak-out.html

@Midlifemale LOL you've got to be kidding. The Catholic church is notorious for allowing priests to rape little boys. Maybe if they let them have sex with other men, that wouldn't have happened.

@caesar7 There's just as much "deviance" in religion as there is in every other organization. What needs to end is the hypocrisy. Religious leaders tell everyone else that gay sex is a sin while they're engaging in it themselves.

@LeopoldBloom I agree...there is deviance in every religion. Priests, ministers, and the like are all guilty of them and they should be excommunicated for doing so and for not following the doctrine of the religion.

@caesar7 It's not limited to religion. The same thing happens in business, entertainment, academe - pretty much anywhere powerful men are in charge and are not held accountable.

The problem with "excommunication" is that the men in leadership roles who would normally handle this are instead facilitating or even participating in these abuses. So what ends up happening is that ordinary members leave the religion. I wouldn't say that the overall decline in religious affiliation across all denominations is due to leadership's hypocritical tolerance of pedophilia, rape, and other abuses, but it certainly isn't helping. However, as an atheist who views the influence of religion on society as [i]mostly[/i] negative, I don't have a problem with this. The fewer children there are in church, the fewer will be raped by clergy.