Given that I’m not a believer, I’m not sure what hoop you are referring to. These are the discussions in critical (read: secular academic) scholarship. 

Making a document written thousands of years ago reflect Modern Times applies to both believers trying to justify the Bible and non-believers trying to criticize it. Using the clobber passages as some sort of gotcha for the incompatibility of Christian beliefs and homosexuality is trying to apply modern concepts of sexual orientation to ancient Hebrew ideas of sex roles. It’s more useful to understand that the Bible was written by people in a specific historical cultural context and not some sort of divine book from Heaven. 

I have a cynical reading of it along the lines of why FIFA has given hosting the World Cup to the USA more than once in the last 30 years, despite 'soccer' not being that big in the US... They want to grow into that market!

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Wrong Pope if that were the case. While US Catholics are kinda split down the middle between progressive and conservatives, the clergy and regular attendees are growing more conservative and MAGA Catholics are a thing. A pro-immigrant Pope who has been critical of Trump and Vance is the opposite of that.