But I think it’s largely homosexuals themselves who cause the “orientation” and the person to be conflated, when they say things like being gay is just “who I am”; or when they accuse Christians who oppose gay marriage of being “hateful”, as if you can’t oppose the practice of homosexuality without hating homosexuals themselves. By and large it’s not Christians who say that homosexuals, rather than homosexual acts, must be judged. More often it’s homosexuals themselves who act as though you can’t judge the one without judging the other.

And to an extent, they have a point: A person who does bad things is a bad person. That’s what “bad person” means. Where the Church draws the line is in judging the extent to which any individual is bad, i.e. culpable for his sin. Indeed in most cases we can’t even know *whether* the person is guilty of a sin, not being privy to his private activities. Nevertheless even when he is guilty we may not hate him, nor judge him unworthy of compassion. For there but for the grace of God goes every one of us …

I think what you spell out is primarily missing from the discussion on homosexuality in the church – that is the separation between orientation and action, the later being sinful but not the former.

I fear that many (particularly in Protestant communions) go too far in condemning homosexuals as people; something I wanted to take the opportunity to clarify.

A couple of things to note:

First, while the Church does not consider “being homosexual” a sin, it does consider homosexual sex a mortal sin. And one who dies in unrepentant mortal sin, according to Catholic teaching, may very well be denied entrance to heaven. Along these lines, the cardinal specifically states that “*acting* [not merely "preferring"] against nature and the dignity of the human body is an insult to God”. This is an accurate expression of Catholic teaching.

Second, he said that the sinfulness of homosexuality “does not justify any form of discrimination”, and furthermore that “We on earth cannot condemn, and as human beings we all have the same rights.”

The main problem I see with the statements attributed to him, is that they don’t distinguish between “being homosexual” i.e. having homosexual tendencies, and “engaging in homosexual sex”. Assuming he meant the latter and not the former, his statements are not at odds with Catholic teaching.

Further, later on he did insist that he never meant to imply that we on earth can judge any individual as being worthy or unworthy of heaven, but was only pointing out the objective sinfulness of homosexual acts. ( http://www.zenit.org/article-27740?l=english ) Again, this is consonant with Catholic teaching.