text: Part 4
  
  Applying the above distinction to homosexuality, conservatives tend to employ the first usage as if it were the second, as if it were an argument; and progressive Catholics and the secular world tend to argue in the third way, although they do not regularly use the phrase “natural law” to describe their reasoning.
  
  With regard to this third usage, natural data about homosexual orientation has, to its very great glory, long been accepted in the Catholic moral tradition to conclude that there is no sin in being gay, essentially because whether one is oriented gay or straight is utterly beyond one’s control. Without “control,” without the freedom to choose, there is no personal moral right or wrong to consider. Sexual orientation is just something that one discovers about oneself generally as one enters into puberty. Ultimately it is a personal characteristic as morally neutral as race or physical attributes.