We all believe things on the basis of authority, and it is impossible to function otherwise. I believe there is such a place as Nepal, and I do so without ever having been there myself. But there is a distinction to be made between settled authority, and what I would like to call hard sell peer pressure authority.
Settled authority can be wrong of course, but when you differ with it, you are more of a curiosity than anything else. Hard sell peer pressure authority kicks in when a settled authority is in danger of going over, and the ancien regime has rallied to the defense. Think of Darwinism, and the hard lives of the current Galileos who question it.
But hard sell peer pressure authority also exists when folks are trying to get something settled as an authority in the first place. Think of the full court press that was attempted with climate change. Anybody who didn’t believe that the Science was Settled was a Certified Idiot, for about ten minutes there. Now that the wheels came off the whole thing quite a few people have begun to run their fingers around the inside of their collars, and have offered their best heh heh explanation.
Because it offers more immediate rewards, the hard sell peer pressure approach to normalizing the homothing is more likely to have a longer run than climate change did Climate change insisted on idiotic sacrifices for no discernible reason, and after a bit this dawned on people. There is also no discernible reason why a man would have sex with a man, but this can be effectively hidden by the fog of lust. Irrationality with pleasure attending will always be an easier sell than irrationality with sacrifice attending.
But the unnaturalness of the whole enterprise still means that it must get established as settled authority by the sheer dint of hard sell peer pressure.
The best way to resist this is by refusing to play the game, at all. There are three levels of dissent to the homosexual-agenda. The first is the Tim Keller approach — to coyly demur. Homosexual relations are less than the prime creational norm optimal-best. Less than ideal, so to speak. The second is better, but still has a whiff of compromise in it, depending. When asked if homosexual relations are sinful, the reply is yes, but then the answerer hastens to add that we are all sinners, which is true, and that we are all of us grievous sinners, the speaker included, which is also true, but also, alas, a truth engaged in conceding the point. Homosexuality is sinful, the speaker says while digging a hole in the carpet with his toe, but no more sinful than a lot of other things that the Church has learned how to tolerate. This last part is implied, not stated. It will only be stated after the toleration has begun — not while we are still prepping for it.
The third approach, when asked if homosexual relations are a sin, would be to reply, “Yes, a homosexual act is sinful. Very much so. One of the worst.” And then you wait for the next question, which is not forthcoming because everybody went off to get the feathers and warm up the tar.
This is the point where the dialogue breaks off, and the hard sell peer pressure begins.