Well, it depends who you're talking about when it comes to core beliefs, doesn't it?

Akenaton, I can understand people within a given church/religion/congregation getting upset about this issue if it is being brought into their own religious community....for sure! Then it is their business. And I can understand them debating it or opposing it. For them it is a vital issue which has to do with their beliefs. It just isn't for me, since I don't belong to such a community.

You said something which caught my notice. You said, "The problem is that homosexuality and how we view it has become a political issue, when in fact it is an issue of morality."

Is it an issue of morality? I'm not convinced it is. I think it's primarily an issue of social custom, not morality...but here's another angle: I've studied Taoism a good deal, and I have a tremendous respect for the Taoist philosophy which was prevalent in ancient China in its golden age. It's a very non-judgemental and harmonious philosophy (unlike rule-bound Confucianism, which is its antithesis). Taoism favors individuality, free thinking, and nonaggression. It favors finding the harmonious path and having as few restrictive rules in life as possible. In a community of practicing Taoists you wouldn't really need any rules, because their way of living, if it truly was Taoist, would be harmless and would not threaten others in any way.

In any case, here's how the Taoists viewed sexuality.

They did not see sex as a moral issue at all. They saw it as a health issue, sex being a healthy natural act that all animals and humans engage in for obvious reasons (emotional, social, recreational, and procreational). They felt that to suppress one's sexuality was unnatural and therefore unhealthy. They felt on the other hand that to overemphasize and overdo sexuality was also unhealthy, injurious to the body, and indicative of an emotional problem of some kind. The harmonious path would be the middle path between extremes.

Taoists had no rules against lesbian sexuality ("Rubbing Mirrors" in their vernacular) or male homosexuality ("Dragon Yang"), but they did have a health cautionary where the latter was involved. Their opinion, based on observation of the practice, was that the bringing together of two passive sexual forces ("Rubbing Mirrors") was in no way injurious to the health of the women involved, but that the bringing together of two aggressive sexual forces ("Dragon Yang") was to some extent injurious to the health of the men involved.

So, although there were certainly no rules against it in Taoism, men were cautioned that practicing too much Dragon Yang could over time cause damage to their physical health. It was a minor caution, not a restriction, and as I say, they did NOT regard it as a moral issue. No one would be seen in a condemnatory way for having practiced Dragon Yang.

Taoists felt that males were more subject to energy damage from overuse or misuse of their sexuality than women were, so they had a number of cautionary suggestions about how to deal with that.

Going by my own (albeit limited) observations of people and sexuality in this life, I think they were onto something real there.