People cannot be meaningfully defined by their sexual inclinations. A person cannot be gay in the same way a person cannot be straight. You are either ordered or disordered, and if disordered you may fall to several kinds of abuse of the gift of sexuality: fornication, masturbation, sodomy, sexual torture, rape, etc. I think properly understood "gay" as a shorthand for same-sex-attracted could work, but given the misery of slavery to sin it is cruel to use an old word for joy to describe the abusive and undignified behaviour.
We should love our neighbor, and discern ways to reach them with the light of truth, even when they curse the light and embrace the darkness.
I don't think there's any relationship between homosexuality/bisexuality in and of themselves and being a victim of sexual abuse. Otherwise we'd see some extremely outsized prevalence of these sexual orientations among the victims in all those Catholic sex abuse cases, all of which involved male homosexual abuse.
I think sin as destructive and evil as sexual abuse will always have lasting effects, among them may be weaknesses to similar acts, either as victim or perpetrator. I see no simple cause and effect relationship, at least between the publicly acknowledged same-sex abusers & victims. I am open to there being a more complex or obscure link.
Catholic abuse cases cover a wide range of offences, if you allow for historic cases it is clear the majority of alleged offenses by priests and nuns were violent acts against children of the same sex as the abuser, largely due to the division of care (nuns were in charge of girls, priests were in charge of boys). Sex abuse cases follow a similar pattern, likely for the same reasons. Like offenses by the laity (non-priests and religious nuns/monks) the offending priests and nuns did not exclusively abuse victims of the same sex. Many predators abuse any vulnerable person or even animal at the first opportunity, they are evil and being wolves in sheep's clothing are hungry for victims all the time.
Nope, this topic has been argued about a million times. The amount of children sexually abused is absolutely staggering, but pedos like to pick easy targets. The odd, potentially non-conforming, potentially isolated, likely gay kid? Makes for a very easy target that isn't likely to talk.
Sexual abuse causes mental health problems and often leads to people to be sexually promiscuous, but it doesn't cause homosexuality.
If sexual abuse caused homosexuality there would be a lot more gay people in the world.
I broadly agree, except I would add:
Kids can show signs of confusion or temptations like same-sex attraction. They are not defined by that temptation or confusion, it does not make them evil, just sinners like us all. They are not "likely gay", even if you could prove there was a 75% chance they would be same-sex attracted for the entirety of their adult lives. God can heal them, grant them the grace they need to resist all temptations. They are defined by the love that created us all and sustains us, their dignity comes from being created in the image of God. No temptation or even sin can cover that wondrous truth, we are always free to return to God in repentance.
Sexual abuse does great harm, especially to the young, but it doesn't reliably cause same-sex attraction.
Since same-sex attraction might never be expressed, we cannot reliably trust that metric, especially since despite the celebration of the evil lifestyle of sin in many places, there is still a major taboo against same-sex acts in most of the world. As a result we may be missing most of the picture.
