And this I never understood, at least not from a philosophical viewpoint. I would have figured that gay people would want to stay as far away from Christianity and its rituals as possible.

Tony, I'll second your bewilderment. With respect to some news I have read WRT the Catholic church, what it looks like to me is a group of folks fighting hard to be accepted by a huge institution that is doing its utmost to reject them. I just keep wondering "*Why* do you want to belong???"

I don't know that anbody can really answer that save the folks wo want to belong, so I'm not really looking for an answer, but the questions persists.