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But it's possibly the beginning of an explanation for how come some otherwise perfectly lovely people may remain loyal to homophobic religious denominations: perhaps what they're looking for from religion is more about the Spiritual than the Pastoral domain?

I am sad to have to report that one of the other things people look for in the Pastoral domain is, er, I don't quite know how to put this. They want of the group (be it a religious congregation or any other similar scaled voluntary or state group) that it recognize the fact that their lived experience attests to that There Are Bad People Out There. You know, if we're using the term "Pastoral": wolves. And one of the things they look to in a group, is that it is engaged in actively trying to protect the flock, in attempting to identify the wolves-in-sheep's-clothing and expel them. They see doctrines which are efforts to identify the worthy and the unworthy, the virtuous and the vicious, as intrinsically a good thing, as doing what a good congregation should be doing for the protection of its members.

To someone who sees things that way -- and it's not even a bad way of seeing things -- the fact that any giving teaching or behavior is exclusionary is in no way a bad thing. To the contrary, excluding is something they want their congregation to do.

For such a person, if they don't have a strong moral sense that homophobia is wrong, they may well greet moral authority figures who claim homosexuality is per se wrong and a sign of criminality with the deference anyone might reasonably give a trusted expert whom one has decided to delegate such discriminations to. And even to the extent they see their religion's/congregation's homophobia as bad and wrong, they may see it as merely unfortunate -- as collateral damage that, alas, can't be avoided.

(Of course, there are also people who are looking for, in a congregation, a gang to join to beat up on identified victims, to improve their self-regard by looking down on someone else. Presumably none of them are your so described perfectly lovely people. But that would be another "Pastoral" domain phenomenon.)