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Building off my previous posts, I want to touch on another troubling aspect of anti-gay equality arguments based on Christianity. Setting aside my view that religious doctrine is not a legitimate basis of policy in a secular democracy, there is a fundamental problem with the view that homosexual marriage should be banned and that homosexuality is immoral because the 'Bible says so.'
First, the New Testament, which is the core religious text for Christians, barely touches on homosexuality. Jesus was never recorded as saying anything regarding the morality of homosexuality - the only references to homosexuality as sinful come from the Epistles which were letters written by the Apostle Paul. In fact, according to some interpretations of some New Testament passages, Jesus may have stepped in an healed a gay man (in Matthew 8/ Luke 7) though this remains unresolved because translating the term from the original writing is difficult. More interesting, Acts 8 tells of the conversion of an ethiopian 'eunuch' where eunuch likely means homosexual, rather than what we typically consider a eunuch to be, given the language used and Matthew 19:12 refers to Jesus speaking of eunuchs in a way that suggests some are naturally that way which most translators now believe is a reference to homosexuals. Indeed, Jesus preached love, tolerance, acceptance, humility, compassion... all virtues that modern anti-gay Evangelicals seem to be adamantly OPPOSED to. (Hell, Jesus spoke as a voice for the poor and supposedly decried extreme wealth as greedy and immoral yet most American Evangelicals support economic and social policies that hurt the poor and which glorify and incentivize greed and extreme wealth. Jesus seemed to have been something of a socialist, in my own opinion). Thus, Christian arguments against homosexuality are NOT rooted in the New Testament.
Instead, Christian arguments against homosexuality that are rooted in the Bible come from the Old Testament, which is essentially the Jewish Torah and which was written over centuries by many individuals and much of which is a record of Middle Eastern/Maghreb/Mediterranean history that is infused with supernatural explanations for things that couldn't be understood by people at the time due to a lack of scientific knowledge and which is very similar to (actually, it is synonymous with) what we in the US typically refer to as 'mythology' (why is it that people so readily accept and believe the claims that many, many people discussed in the Book of Genesis, for example, lived to be 800 or 900 years old? why is it that some so readily accept the idea that we all came from Adam and Eve (polls show that only about 22% of Americans believe in Evolution as a natural process while an additional 32% believe in Evolution but give credit for it to God rather than actual natural, scientific process) despite that very obvious logical flaws with this? Why do so many people readily accept that the Earth is only 6000 years old despite indisputable proof that the Earth is approximately 4 -5 BILLION years old (a 2009 Pew poll showed that 32% OF ALL AMERICANS believe this!!!)? Why do so many people buy into these claims despite any evidence and despite tons of evidence to the contrary while simultaneously claiming that other religions' beliefs are crazy, make no sense and clearly aren't true?).
More important and central to my point here is the fact that much of the rest of the Old Testament lays out rules and laws that the Jewish people were informed by God that they had to follow (nevermind the fact that many passages in the Old Testament suggest that there are many deities, or 'gods', and the Jewish god, and therefore the Christian god, was only one of them, albeit the only 'legitimate one' - the Old Testament never really clarifies this issue, and contradicts itself in places - indeed, early followers of Judaism, and, later, some early Christian sects were polytheistic!). The rules laid out in the Old Testament are definitely a sign of the times in which they were written and many only make sense in that context (the prohibition against touching the carcasses of 'unclean animals' in Leviticus 5:2, for example, makes sense given the lack of knowledge about hygiene, germs, disease, etc. - a common sense rule given the context of no scientific knowledge, no modern medicine and no refrigeration - although the penalty for touching the carcass of such an animal, which is to publicly confess in a place of worship as to your guilt and make an offering to god (sometimes construed as a sacrifice of an animal or an offering of something of value) is a bit odd).
And this is the IMPORTANT part: the primary argument made by Evangelicals against homosexuality, and, by extension, gay marriage is based on a few passages in the Old Testament that refer to gay sex as a sin, specifically Leviticus 20:13 which holds that "if a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own hands." Now this is pretty cut and dry: if you have gay sex, followers of the Old Testament are MORALLY OBLIGATED TO MURDER YOU. No justification is offered, of course, but the moral rules in Leviticus rare offer justifications making one wonder why, exactly, the rules are sins... But, here is the KEY POINT: If you want to use the Bible to argue that being gay is immoral and to support discrimination against gays and to deny marriage equality then you basically HAVE to base that argument off of Leviticus. BUT: HOW DO YOU JUSTIFY CHERRY PICKING THE RULES FROM LEVITICUS THAT SHOULD BE FOLLOWED AND WHICH YOU AREN'T GOING TO WORRY ABOUT!? Why is this important? Because, aside from saying we should kill the gays, Leviticus says a lot of other crazy **** with equally crazy punishments but social conservatives don't get worked up over them and aren't trying to legislate them.
Aside from telling us gay sex is a sin punishable by death, Leviticus also tells us:
"You are to keep My statutes. You shall not breed together two kinds of your cattle; you shall not sow your field with two kinds of seed, nor wear a garment upon you of two kinds of material mixed together"
Leviticus 19.19 - So it is ALSO a sin to wear clothing made of more than one fabric or engage in multiple cropping or inter-cropping, which is almost essential for ensuring food security in many arid parts of the world. Why? Who the hell knows.
You shall not make any cuts in your body for the dead nor make any tattoo marks on yourselves: I am the LORD.
Leviticus 19:28 - So if you have a tattoo then you better not be arguing against gay marriage, because you chose to violate God's law too!
Anyone who blasphemes the name of the LORD must be put to death. The entire assembly must stone him.
Leviticus 24:16 - Yes, screw free speech - if you take the lord's name in vain then not only are you sinning, but all those in your community are MORALLY OBLIGATED TO STONE YOU TO DEATH - so all these anti-gay bigots who are against marriage equality should be just as active in trying to pass a law requiring that anyone who uses god's name inappropriately be stoned to death by ordinary citizens!!!
Several passages of Leviticus 21 make it a sin for anyone with eczema, a broken bone, who is blind, who is a midget or who is 'flat nosed' to profane god by coming into a holy place of worship.
Even more sickening!? "As for your male and female slaves whom you may have-- you may acquire male and female slaves from the nations that are around you."
Leviticus 25-44 --- One of MANY passages about how to properly buy/acquire slaves and who can be a slave. Similar passages are in Exodus - the Old Testament tells us that a father can sell his daughters into slavery if he wants and such daughters cannot be set free, that women are to be treated more harshly as slaves than men.... One passage says that a man can morally beat his slaves and can only be punished if such beatings result in the death of the slave! Several passages directly refer to slaves as property, and allow them to be treated 'ruthlessly' so long as they aren't Hebrew, in which case they can still be enslaved but must be treated better.
Another passage makes it a sin to eat shellfish.
It also is an abomination, punishable by permanent exile, to lay in the bed with your wife while she is menstruating!
So, my ultimate point? IF you want to make the claim that gay people are immoral and that gays shouldn't be allowed to marry because the Bible says so then you better also support slavery, you must also want to make it illegal for the disabled, midgets and ugly people to go to church, you must make shellfish illegal, you must support laws requiring that the US deport citizens found to lay in the same bed as a woman who is menstruating, you must support making polyblended clothing illegal and you must make tattoos illegal. IF YOU DO NOT SUPPORT SLAVERY OR THE REST OF THIS CRAP THEN YOU ARE A HYPOCRITE FOR BEING ANTI-GAY BECAUSE OF THE BIBLE. Don't cherry-pick - if you can say gays can't marry and justify your position using Leviticus, then you better support everything else in Leviticus including slavery.
Too long for me to read on-line, but l did try to read enough to get the gist. Like it or not, most of Western Civilization can be traced back to Bible. For the record, I am not Christian nor Jew.
Take 'Thou shall not steal.' In the ancient world, piracy was not considered a crime. Thucididyes makes this point in The Peloponnesian Wars.
In fact in many societies murder outside of the clan was A-OK. In Guns, Germs, & Steel anthro writer Jared Diamond relates how when a couple of New Guineans stumbled across each other in the wild, they would start rattling off names of relatives to see if they might be somehow distantly related. If there were no common relatives, the proper course was to fight to the death.
Are laws against murder and theft invalid, since they are based on the Bible?
Too long for me to read on-line, but l did try to read enough to get the gist. Like it or not, most of Western Civilization can be traced back to Bible. For the record, I am not Christian nor Jew.
Take 'Thou shall not steal.' In the ancient world, piracy was not considered a crime. Thucididyes makes this point in The Peloponnesian Wars.
In fact in many societies murder outside of the clan was A-OK. In Guns, Germs, & Steel anthro writer Jared Diamond relates how when a couple of New Guineans stumbled across each other in the wild, they would start rattling off names of relatives to see if they might be somehow distantly related. If there were no common relatives, the proper course was to fight to the death.
Are laws against murder and theft invalid, since they are based on the Bible?
Laws against murder and theft are not based off the Bible, that's rather silly - The world's oldest legal code, which predates the Bible, had strict punishments for murder and theft. Most cultures prohibit such activities - Christianity has no lock on that. Preventing murder and theft is common sense - some tribal societies, such as those in Papua New Guinea, provide exceptions, but that is due to low population density, zero technology, extreme isolation, among other things. In the ancient world piracy wasn't considered a 'crime' because crimes of that nature didn't fit within the legal frameworks of the the types of states that existed at the time - namely city-states and empires. There weren't enforcement mechanisms.
Beyond that, you completely missed my point. The argument is that those who want to discriminate against gays and want to justify that discrimination using the Bible must resort to quoting Leviticus - literally, the Book of Laws. The passage prohibiting gay sex (and proscribing the death penalty for it) is found amidst a long list of laws including prohibitions on eating pork, on eating shellfish, on laying in bed with a menstruating woman, on wearing clothing made from two types of fabric, on growing two different crops in the same plot of land, on (I **** you not) tearing a piece of clothing and close to a hole string of laws on how to acquire slaves, how to beat your slaves, when you can kill a slave, how you can torture female slaves and their children, etc. In context, the prohibition against gay sex is listed right next to these other insane, unjustifiable laws. It makes no logical sense to look through this long list of laws that no one in their right mind would follow today and then, at random, choose the one passage mentioning gay sex and then cherry pick it and say - see! The Bible says gay sex is bad, we should kill the gays! Either you take Leviticus seriously, and gay sex is bad but so is wearing a jacket that has a nylon lining inside a cotton shell. It is totally illogical to take the one passage against gay sex out of a list of hundreds of rules and then make the argument that gay sex is bad because this list of rules in the Bible says it is while simultaneously ignoring ALL the other rules! And, just to point out how important these issues were in relation to one another - Leviticus has 2 passages on gay sex - they both say basically the same thing, the only difference is one proscribes the death penalty for it and the other doesn't specify a punishment.
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