Sexual immorality - of whatever variety - is sin. Period. Sin negatively affects everyone.
So I'll ask in this thread like I've asked in many others...
If it's all sin, and "all sin negatively affects everyone", (
I assume you mean to varying degrees, as I'm sure you're not claiming that two men down the street being in a relationship is impacting you the same as if someone robbed you at gunpoint)
...then why, with regards to
sins that have very little impact on others, is there so much of a disproportionate fixation on this one "low-impact sin" in particular?
For instance, the "sin" of not caring about the earth, dumping trash everywhere, and polluting water supplies, etc...without dispute...have a substantially larger impact on others when someone commits it, yet, I've never heard a staunch evangelical take the same hard-line stance/vocal objection to littering that they have to homosexuality. The sad reality is, there are people out there who would allow themselves to be more offended by seeing two men holding hands, then they would be to seeing some of the ecological aftermath of corporations dumping waste in rivers...and that's particularly disappointing.
There are larger ministries that even go as far as paying for telemarketing campaigns to call people to attempt to raise money for lobbying to fight against it, and sponsor candidates that oppose it.
Overeating (aka, damaging your own body 'the temple') is a sin, why not the same outcry against that? I would go as far as saying that people causing their own severe chronic health conditions has a greater impact on me than someone else being gay. Someone else being gay doesn't put a massive drain on public health funding.
Or, if that example doesn't tickle your fancy, let's go with the sin of smoking cigarettes... definite negative impacts on others. Ironically enough, I've heard more southern evangelicals railing against smoking restrictions on the grounds of "if they want do that, they should be allowed"
So, in a nutshell, your "it's sin, and all sin impacts everyone" reasoning is flawed to say the least (and seems to just be a cop-out), because in order for that to be even remotely true, all "sin" would need to have equitable impact on the lives of others...otherwise it's not reasonable to treat them all the same.
Thus the reason going 10 mph over the speed limit vs. vehicular homicides don't carry the same penalty even though they're both "driving infractions"...any logical person understands that you don't put the same restrictions on things that have very little impact that you would on something that has a huge impact.
This is where many fundamentalists just need to bite the bullet and just come out and admit that there position is derived exclusively from their religious text, and can't be supported with any form of secular or non-biblical reasoning. It seems as if they always are inclined to try to defend their disproportionate outrage with at least some form of logical reasoning, but I hate to be the one to tell you...there is none. Very few just want to flat out admit "I hate the sin of homosexuality more than other, often times more impactful, sins because of religious upbringing...of course, I understand why they try to concoct a "logical" defense instead of that...because if they just said that, it would be very evident that their line of reasoning wouldn't pass 1st amendment standards as laws can't be made, respecting an establishment of religion (
they must pass "The Lemon Test").
