http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/19/magazine/19ANTIGAY.html?pagewanted=1
Rollup of pretty much every one of the “christian” lines on how gay marriage out there is an abomination. I just don’t get it.
The Bible says homosexuality’s a sin, and they’re not going to willingly allow anything that implies acceptance of a sin in society, because that implies the sin is “ok”. I think it’s that simple.
The bible also says that shellfish & menstruating women are unclean, and that slavery is just dandy. Yes, yes, I know there’s a lot of oh-so-delicate theology making excuses for what’s in and what’s out, but give me a break. You can “reinterpet” anything you want in or out of there; it’s just covering for pre-existing opinions.
I’m sorry, but a bunch of old testament hoo-hah that supposedly doesn’t count anymore except when it does + out-of-historical-context extreme opinions from the fresh zealot convert is not the same as “Jesus said kill the homos.”
Well, there are New Testament quotes condemning homosexual behavior also, so it’s not just an Old Testament thing. But regardless, that’s your answer. As long as the Bible says homosexuality is a sin, right-wing Christians will fight anything and everything that has to do with homosexual rights. The Bible is gays’ biggest enemy.
That’s not to say that most right-wing Christians want gays to die. Most view homosexuals as people needing to be saved, like any other non-Christian. It’s that concept of “hate the sin, love the sinner” which more liberal people say is an impossibility. But accepting gay marriage, and accepting gay behavior as normal and ok, is something right-wing Christians will not ever do. Never. Time was able to smooth over acceptance of things like interracial relationships, since that’s not explicitly called sinful in the Bible, but time’s not going to have any effect on something the Bible explicitly calls out.
Well, it’s not just that it is sin, but that gay marriage would insitutionalize sin - a type of sin that is also condemned by Paul, so it’s not just Old Testament hoo-hah.
But you have this particular “sin” coupled with a cultural bias -an old cultural bias - that has persisted in many parts of the world regardless of religion. Islam condemns it, Judaism condemns it, Hinduism is seen as hostile to it (though I’m not sure if any of their sacred texts refer to it.) China is not especially tolerant of homosexuality, despite having no religious imperaitve not to be so. So there is mutual reinforcement in Evangelical Christian circles - “History and the Bible can’t both be wrong”, you can imagine some saying.
Plus, as the article notes, accepting homosexuality as legitimate means accepting that God himself is in error because he/she created a being that is biologically committed to sinning. To accept that he/she did create that way means that the Bible is not literally true. Which means that the whole faith comes tumbling down like the Walls of Jericho.
Troy
That’s my point - suddenly Paul’s personal oddities override Jesus’s message. It’s such a big deal that Jesus never mentions it. By contrast, he was pretty damn specific about divorce, but that’s ok apparently. It’s a rationalization, not a rationale.
Plus, as the article notes, accepting homosexuality as legitimate means accepting that God himself is in error because he/she created a being that is biologically committed to sinning.
Considering the state of current christian born-in-sin thinking, I’m not sure how it’s significantly different. This comes up in the free will arguments - why didn’t he just create us to be incapable of sinning?
What’s nice is that it takes the heat away from the “wealth is a sin” message that many of these same sects were preaching a century ago.
They do think that homosexuality is a matter of free will - urges that can be overcome through will power or proper ministry. It’s a disease like alcoholism or drug dependency, not like cystic fibrosis or cancer.
Accepting that is a biological imperative though - that people are “programmed” that way - leads to a fallible God or fallible text.
Saying that all sin and fall short of God is very different from saying that God’s creation is compelling you to sin.
Troy
I know. Come to think of that would also explain the scorn I see heaped on genetic predispositions to psychological disorders, addictions, though.
Accepting that is a biological imperative though - that people are “programmed” that way - leads to a fallible God or fallible text.
Is this really a dangerous, open question in the church? Approval of slavery & genocide, prohibitting divorce: the written up god has a pretty checkered history there compared to the consensus preferences of today’s church. I don’t think my parents have that kind of cognitive dissonance going on, but I dunno.
That’s where the cultural bias comes in. Divorce has been acceptable in most cultures in one form or another, even if it means torturing the rules to create annulments where no real annulment exists.
If you are looking for logical consistency across issues, don’t. But I think that many evangelicals would draw a line between slavery (which is a societal sin) and homosexuality (which is a personal sin). Plus, saying that the Bible doesn’t condemn something explicitly is not the same as saying that God is encouraging it. After all, God encouraged the Israelite slaves to leave Egypt and didn’t tell them to obey their masters. Sure it took him a few hundred years to get around to it, but he’s a busy God.
Troy
If the answer is “don’t expect logic,” why am I expected to listen to the “logical arguments” they make, then? “Here’s some random sentences that make me feel Matthew Shepard had it coming” isn’t very convincing.
That’s where the cultural bias comes in. Divorce has been acceptable in most cultures in one form or another, even if it means torturing the rules to create annulments where no real annulment exists.
Even divorce isn’t a concept universally accepted by all Christians. The last few churches that my parents attended, all of which had 100+ sized congregations, considered divorce to be impermissible and sinful, except maybe in cases of adultery.
I think the key difference Jason is pointing out is that despite that moral objections most Christians aren’t crusading to have divorce made illegal. If they really wanted to use the law to prevent people from indulging in sinful behavior, then outlawing divorce should be an equal priority to outlawing gay marriage.
You can’t expect logic because their arguments generally aren’t logical sound in any case. They twist science, manufacture data, misuse statistics and when this is all pointed out, they fall back on faith and cultural bias.
Why do the literalist evangelicals pick and choose? Hell if I know, but it’s not like this debate is about persuasion. You won’t convince most of them, I seriously doubt they’ll ever convince you.
Troy
Ah, you’re right, I missed his point there. And there was quite a fight over divorce back in the late 1800’s, I think, when it first became easy to obtain…maybe that fight is comparable to the current hubbub over gay marraige? I think that when Christians realized they couldn’t outlaw it (whether because they were opposed by courts, or because they didn’t have the numbers – I don’t remember), they grudgingly accepted it because they had no choice.
Well, the thing that confuses me there is the “grudging acceptance” is now “about as objectionable as getting your oil changed.” The Southern Baptist churchs I grew up in, for example, quite clearly didn’t think of divorce as a sin. Sure, you felt sorry for both of them, and maybe if it was for a specific cause of cheating or something that itself was a sin, but the divorce itself wasn’t. It’s really quite amazing that the same people will go digging for secondary source justifications to be extraordinarily mean to some of society’s biggest outcasts.
I get annoyed when the Religious Right claims to speak for all Christians. Apparently so does former Senator John Danforth:
Moderate Christians are less certain about when and how our beliefs can be translated into statutory form, not because of a lack of faith in God but because of a healthy acknowledgement of the limitations of human beings. Like conservative Christians, we attend church, read the Bible and say our prayers.
But for us, the only absolute standard of behavior is the commandment to love our neighbors as ourselves. Repeatedly in the Gospels, we find that the Love Commandment takes precedence when it conflicts with laws. We struggle to follow that commandment as we face the realities of everyday living, and we do not agree that our responsibility to live as Christians can be codified by legislators.
Conservative Christians can claim to speak for all Christians because they don’t believe moderate Christians ARE Christians. Conservative and liberal Christianity are two completely different religions, really. It’s a shame they have the same name.
Sadly that is true. But it’s also true that conservative Christians claim to speak for all Christians because moderate Christians have been too quiet and too unorganized to do anything about the rhetoric. I hope that’s changing. There are some hopeful signs like the Christian Alliance for Progress.
Fixed it for you.
No it is not, people who can’t accept that we know more of the world than old men 2000 years ago did are gays’ biggest enemy, as well as men using their masculinity as a shield and with a victimisation complex dwarfing most.
As long as right-wing Christians think it’s reasonable, and think that part of the Bible matters, they will do everything to fight it.