Serge A. Storms and cuddly_tomato, I'm coming in late to your discussion so I don't have the full picture, but I would like to clarify a few things.
Christians and Homosexuality
First, the Christian banner is one that covers many different beliefs and many different people, and it's a banner that many people claim for themselves, regardless of how applicable it is to them. That said, I don't know any Christians that deny the validity of the Old Testament. Some explain it away or justify it in different ways, but I'm not aware of a single group that denies it completely.
Second, there are some organized Christian denominations that allow and condone homosexuality, but you'll find that these organizations are largely condemned by the rest of the Christian community. These organizations also tend to be the larger ones with non-Protestant origins, and are debatably more 'organization' than 'Christian'. The acceptance of homosexuality within the Christian community should be seen as the exception rather than the norm.
Third, I'll tell you about my beliefs and those of my fellow Christians which I associate with. We consider ourselves to be 'true' Christians, not aligned with a particular parent denomination or organization, and devoted solely to the Bible and to Christ himself. There are a lot of us in America but I'm not sure how we would count up against the large numbers of Baptists, Lutherans, Methodists, etc, not to mention the non-Protestant denominations.
Our stance on homosexuality is that it's a sin, just like greed, lust, hate, jealousy, etc. These sins result in us taking actions that are sinful such as stealing, sleeping with another man's wife, killing someone, etc. We all have these sins, and we're all filled with these desires, there's nothing we can change about that on our own. It's the same with homosexuality.
Homosexuality is a sin that lives in you just like the ones I mentioned above. The best we can do, homosexuals included (since they're no different from any other kind of sinner), is to exercise control and not act out on our sinful desires. This includes not stealing when we want something, not sleeping with a married woman, not taking revenge on someone we hate, and not having a sexual relationship with a member of the same gender.
There's no way we could hate someone who was homosexual any more than we could hate any other sinner (and we're all sinners!). What we do hate is when people demand that we accept homosexuality and the homosexual lifestyle with open arms. We're against the sin of homosexuality and those who practice homosexuality freely the same as we're against those who commit adultery and those who lie, cheat and steal.
Pirate Kid and the Definition of Religion
Back on the topic of the kid who dressed as a pirate and claimed it was his religion, obviously this kid is either total nuts or trying to get away with something. Even if he was completely sincere, there needs to be a serious discussion about what can and cannot be considered a valid religion (that's a loaded subject if I ever saw it). If we let something like this slide, I could just as well go around stabbing people with pencils and claim it's a part of my religion.
You could make the argument that Jihad is an important part of the Islamic religion, but does this mean we should tolerate Jihad? There has to be an objective moral standard which we can agree on or else anything and everything becomes valid and morally permissible.
