ABSTRACT
The goal of advocates of toleration was therefore to reform the law in a way that the state could no longer use force to impose the dominant religion. Appeals for toleration in this sense became increasingly numerous, and in a variety of countries edicts were issued to ensure it; but it was not long before these same edicts were annulled, persecutions returned, and calls were once more heard for the punishment of heretics and dissenters from the faith. While the word itself already existed in classical Latin, the problem of toleration emerged as a social issue in Europe in the sixteenth century, as a result of religious schisms and conflicts. The Church considers homosexual practices to be morally wrong and forbidden, on the basis of the Old and the New Testaments, its own tradition and its own theological interpretation of sexuality.
