I was raised Catholic in Ireland. Catholics, like most Christians, tend to quietly ignore the church teachings they don't like and emphasise the parts they do.
this post was submitted on 25 Mar 2026
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I’ve met Christians who have explained their train of thought.
Their strongest argument, in my mind, is that the Christian god created the universe for humans to choose to live well. This god is not intervening and simply created the universe’s initial conditions, much like a clock-maker. In this view, Christians simply choose what kind of life they want and they hope it will get them closer to their god.
It would seem that the choice of being progressive does not stop many Christians from meeting their god. In fact, I’ve met people who say that progressive causes are the way we build heaven on Earth.
Another argument I’ve heard is that the Christian god has said lots of things to lots of people over long spans of time. These utterings have not always been exactly the same. Sometimes the Christian god says some things to some people and some other things to other people. Therefore it is a good Christian’s duty to dutifully reinterpret the Christian god’s words.
I don’t particularly like this second argument because it seems unnecessarily complicated.
But the first one seems more coherent and with less moving pieces.
if the Bible does say being gay is a sin
It doesn't say that.
you are basically saying sinning is okay
I think Christians think that everyone sins, if only they believed in a way that people's sins could be forgiven.
What about Matthew 7:12:
In everything do to others as you would have them do to you
Would you have others tell you to be ashamed of something you can't change?
Humans have no problem holding in their mind simultaneously two fundamentally opposing ideas. Your question stems from the assumption that beliefs and especially religious ones are borne from this sort of unimpeachable internal logic, if A then B. That's enlightenment wannabe thinking how we should be. And it isn't like that.
Also, we are herd animals, we want to belong to something. A lot of people want to belong to this or that religious group to fulfill their own needs. Even if they disagree with some of the religious commandments. So they espouse stuff they don't actually agree with without any or much internal conflict.
I also feel that few people are actually "raised Christians." They tend to be raised Baptists, Presbyterians, Catholics, Mormons, etc. They have wildly differing views on that carpenter from the Middle East and what it all means.
I strongly recommend Dan Maclelan on YouTube, a Biblical scholar who has put hours and hours into research.
The Bible is a bunch of books written by a bunch of authors who all had their own views of the world, and maliciously or not altered or mistranslated the original text. In some cases, this was to make a thing that they themselves didn’t personally like also something that God also didn’t like.
Even if you don’t like that answer, we add a lot into the Bible from other texts that aren’t even closely related. Most of our ideas of hell come from Dante’s Divine Comedy, a satire piece about political figures of his era. We also have Lilith, Adam’s “first wife”; and Lucifer being the snake in the garden of Eden, when there’s nothing correlating the two.
All that to say; the Bible is a book of stories that aren’t even closely likely mythologized, but when you get down to the basics, the New Testament says to love each other and treat each other with respect. Do your best to be the best possible you. And when you look at that interpretation, loving LGBTQ+ people and accepting that sometimes abortions are a necessary evil, the Bible doesn’t seem to be at odds with that.
For the record, “You shall not take the Lord’s name in vain” does not mean saying “Jesus!” When you stub your toe. It means to not tell people to do thing X or thing Y “because God doesn’t like it”. And the reason for no swearing was to differentiate the “learned man” from the “lowly worker.”
Cognitive dissonance, my friend.
The Catholic doctrine is that all people are born with a soul, and your soul is made in the image of God. In other words, your body has no importance, it is your soul that makes you god-like. In this vein, every person on earth is a child of God. It's not an exclusive church. It's a universal church. As a church, it does not claim to have all of the answers. If someone truly believes that God made them gay, that's between them and God. It is not for us to judge other peoples' sins but to love and support them as God's children. I don't think you can square abortion with the literal Catholic doctrine of souls though. You'd have to just not believe that. You can be pro-choice in the sense of "Women should be able to receive life-saving healthcare" but elective abortions does not square.
With regard to abortion the hard no stance is relatively new - prior to 1869 (which is recent in the eyes of the ~2000 year old church) abortions were permissible before the quickening, or when the mother could first feel the fetus moving. I still think it’s a somewhat elegant compromise to a difficult situation but understandably both the “life starts at conception” people and the “my body is sacrosanct” people hate it.
The reason for the focus on the quickening was that it was how they determined whether the baby was alive. They didn't have ultrasounds, so, until the baby kicked, they had no idea whether it was in fact a healthy baby. I know this because we studied it in crim. That's what got California to update its murder statute from the common law definition.
The secret is picking and choosing what you want out of the bible. Not joking - this is true for most religions. You don't get to hundreds of different abrahamic denominations without different interpretations and understanding of the texts.
In my experience many of those "open minded" churches focus on principles like not judging thy neighbor, we are all gods creatures, we are all sinners - help each other, and other scripture of acceptance. It is God's duty to decide who will burn in hell, not mans.