Last week was the first week of school and as the morning portion of my route wasn't running yet, I had the opportunity to cover the morning portion of a sick driver's route. Towards the middle of the week, they had a new driver ride along with me because he will be driving the route next week, and they wanted to give him an idea about how the route works.
Anyway, there was a portion of the route where we had about 45 minutes of downtime and we did a little bit of chatting. I had told him that I am gay in conversation (no, it wasn't something I just threw out there, hoping he is, too). He told me that he is a very religious person and he believes that being gay is wrong and his argument, as is so often the case, was that in Romans it says "And I quote" (he actually said that) "that a man shall not lie with another man and a woman shall not lie with another woman." Unfortunately, I didn't have a Bible with me so I couldn't prove him wrong, but I told him "Actually it doesn't say that." He didn't believe me, but I looked it up later and I was right.
Here is what it does say in Romans 1:26-27: "Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion."
Now, it doesn't take a Biblical expert to see that nowhere in those verses does it say what that new driver claimed. As I read it, I just see a description of what was done and an assertion that such actions are shameful. Any guy who has ever masturbated (and maybe some women, too) will tell you that they felt ashamed after doing it. Does that make it wrong?
I have a feeling that when people call being gay "unnatural" they are probably referring to these verses. The word "natural" appears three times, twice in a positive way and once as a negative. But there are documented cases in nature where animals have gay sex - and let's be honest, there are some instances where gay sex often looks like a couple of animals going at it... But I digress...
It doesn't even say that the women had sex with other women! It just says they gave up "natural relations" for "unnatural relations" but it doesn't specifically say that the latter ones were with other women. Maybe they fell in love with unicorns. And then all the people went out and slaughtered them and that's why we don't have unicorns any more.
Now I will admit that the case of gay men in the passage appears pretty damning. It calls what they did "indecent" but frankly, isn't that just a judgment call? It doesn't even say in there that God was pissed they were doing it. It just says that what they were doing was indecent, shameful and unnatural. But those three words are human concepts. Those are human emotions, written by a human; specifically written by a man. I'm sure many women out there would agree with me that men make mistakes.
I also find it interesting that there is a footnote in the Bible where I found this passage. The Bible I used is the NIV study Bible that I got in college. 3/4 of the page is actual Biblical text and the other 1/4 is filled with interpretations by the publishers.
Here is what the publishers say about those two verses: "Homosexual practice is sinful in God's eyes. The Old Testament also condemns the practice (see Leviticus 18:22)." I'm not even going to go into the whole Leviticus debate because it's been done over and over. We've all heard the verses that condemn touching pigskin (so no football), wearing clothing of mixed fabric (so no cotton/polyester blends) and shellfish (NO MORE SHRIMP!) many times over. Aside from that, Christians believe that when Jesus died on the cross, he was throwing away those Old Testament laws (except for the 10 commandments) which is why the rules of Leviticus don't apply to Christians (except, I guess, for the practice of homosexuality).
But I take issue with the footnote interpretation that homosexuality is sinful in the eyes of God. They claim that these verses prove that God hates fags, but I just don't see the evidence! It doesn't say that in the text. It doesn't even say that in the verses that follow. Oddly, it says in the beginning that God gave them over to shameful lusts, which might be proof that God actually made us gay... I'm just saying.
Those footnotes are an interpretation and nothing more! They are the views the the publishers of the NIV study Bible came away with while reading the texts. Does that make them right? Does that make them gospel truth?
Do you remember the movie Goonies? I am probably the only person in the world who will ever compare the Bible to the movie Goonies, but yeah, what the hell; I'm going there. At the beginning of the movie, Mikey's mom comes home with that Hispanic woman and tells the kids that she is going to help them pack up. Then she asks Mouth (the Corey Feldman character) to interpret her instructions in Spanish for the Hispanic woman. As they goes through the house, Mouth misinterprets the instructions for his own shits and giggles. None of the other characters even know he is doing it - just the audience is in on the joke thanks to the humorous subtitles.
My point is that Mouth had an agenda and he purposely misinterpreted what was said for the Hispanic woman and that poor woman came away with some very frightening perceptions of what went on in that household.
I think the same thing is true with the Bible. Certain people interpret the texts and put their texts right there on the page, quite possibly in an attempt to fool people into thinking that those interpretations are also the words of God when in reality they are the product of an agenda. It's the same thing that Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin always do - they throw out their interpretations of social issues in a way that makes it look like what they are saying is the Fundamental Truth. Don't believe me? Glenn Beck has the balls to claim that he is the voice of God. I kid you not! He actually claims to be the vessel through which God apparently wants to voice ignorance and hatred and fear.
I just wish that we could have subtitles when people like Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin are speaking, just so that the people who actually listen to them would be able to see what they are really saying.
Showing posts with label The Bible. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Bible. Show all posts
Saturday, September 4, 2010
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Why not gay marriage?
Oh, great; another blog about being gay. What is this guy? Some kind of queer? As long as questions keep coming up in my mind about the confusing anti-gay defenses, the more I'm going to need to blog about it to help me better understand how and why these anti-gay activists think the way they do.
Today, the California Supreme Court ruled in favor of Proposition 8, continuing the ban on gay marriage in that state. A friend of mine said he wasn't surprised by the ruling. Back in November the people voted for it and it passed. It wouldn't make sense for the court to overturn a voter-approved proposition, wrong though it may be, because to do so would make people think that democracy doesn't work. I can see what he's saying, but at the same time, I'm saddened; not because of today's ruling, but because this issue went to the voters in the first place.
I have really tried to understand the anti-gay marriage defense. I have tried to find logic in their protests, their Bible verses, their actions. The more I look, the less logic I see. Instead, I see hypocrisy and double talk.
When I heard the news about Prop 8 in California, I started thinking, yet again, about this whole idea of the Bible's definition of marriage. Is it so clearly defined as people argue? I got out my NIV study Bible that I had in college and started looking up verses pertaining to marriage. One thing did become clear as I looked up the verses. Every single one of them were NOT official definitions. Not one! Instead, what I found were examples of marriage.
For one thing, all of the verses tended to start with one word: IF. "If a man marries a woman...", "If a man has recently married..." One verse actually said "For example..." (Romans 7:2-3). Are examples clear definitions as argued by the anti-gay marriage campaign? If I were to look up marriage in the Webster's Dictionary, would it say "For example, a man and a woman joining in union?" Actually, here's a fun fact! I did look up the word marriage on the Webster's online dictionary. Take a look at what I found.
As I looked at the "official" definition of marriage, I noticed that those were examples. So maybe an official definition is an example? Maybe those references in the Bible are "official definitions". If that is the case, then how do the people of today, who hold up these definitions of marriage in the Bible get around passages like
Romans 7:2-3 – For example, by law a married woman is bound to her husband as long as he is alive, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law of marriage. So then, if she marries another man while her husband is still alive, she is called an adultress. But if her husband dies, she is released from that law and is not an adultress even though she marries another man.
Woah! Does this mean that a woman who gets a divorce is a slut if she marries another man and her ex-husband is still alive?
Here's another verse I found interesting:
Hebrews 13:4 – Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral.
Nowhere in that verse does it say "Marriage between a man and a woman." It just says the word marriage with no "clear definition" of what that word means. Now it does say "sexually immoral" and I know that many would jump on that phrase and say "Right there! That's the case against homosexuality right there because the Bible clearly defines homosexuality as 'immoral'!" Okay, fine, even if you adopt that narrow view, I would still have to argue that it doesn't specifically say that a marriage is between a man and a woman. All it says is that "marriage should be honored by all." Interesting. Honored by ALL. Should ALL marriage also be honored? Just wondering.
I went to Google and typed in the words "gay marriage Bible". I was hoping to find websites that would tell me exactly how and where the Bible speaks against gay marriage. Here is the first website that popped up.
I thought this essay was very interesting. Not surprisingly, the author turns to the story of Sodom found in Genesis. Two angels of the Lord went to Sodom to find Lot and the men of the city followed them. They knocked on Lot's door and demanded that the two angels be sent out to them so they could have sex with them. Instead, Lot opted to send out his two virgin daughters and the men of Sodom had sex with them instead.
Okay, so here are my issues with this story and the defenses of the author of that website. First, how shitty is it that Lot sent his poor daughters out as replacements? This was the most holy man in all the city? This was the man that God sent His angels there to save? YIKES! Second, the men had sex with the woman. Well, if that's the case....they are they gay? I can tell you as a gay man, I have never had a desire to sleep with a woman. It just doesn't appeal to me. If I find a guy attractive and he sends out a woman and says, "Here, give this a try..." I'm going to walk away saying, "No thanks." So if those men of Sodom were such evil homosexual men, why were their sexual lusts satisfied by a couple of virgin chicks? They sound like creepy straight guys to me. Come to think of it, have you ever seen any pictures of angels? They look kind of....feminine, don't they? Could it be that these two pretty boys walked into the city and were mistaken as women? Just a thought.
So given all of that, is this as valid an example AGAINST gay marriage as the author of the website claims? In the summary, the author of the website lists this story under examples of the Bible "clearly" teaching that same sex marriage is wrong. But is this as "clear" an example as the author would like to believe? I find that hard to believe, myself.
To further discredit the list of Bible verses, under that same heading of the Bible clearly teaching against gay marriage, the author lists Judges 19:14. In my Bible, this is what the verse says: "So they went on, and the sun set as they neared Gibeah in Benjamin." Wow! That is very damning evidence against gay marriage there. I mean how can one argue against that? Clearly, that verse from the Bible is teaching that gay marriage is wrong! Right?
The author lists verses from Leviticus where, in another blog, I also pointed out other "sins and abominations" that Leviticus that today aren't considered sins.
Another verse listed under that same section as defense against gay marriage is Deuteronomy 23:17 - "No Israelite man or woman is to become a shrine prostitute." And the hard evidence against gay marriage is.....?
Another listed verse, 1 Kings 14:24 - "There were even male shrine prostitutes in the land; the people engaged in all the detestable practices of the nations of the Lord had driven out before the Israelites."
No Same Sex Marriage Biblical References in the Old Testament
The Bible clearly teaches no same sex marriage.
Genesis 19; Judges 19:14
Leviticus 18:22 and Leviticus 20:13
Deuteronomy 23:17; 1 Kings 14:24, 15:12, 22:46; 2 Kings 23:7
These are the verses from that section. I took that directly from the website. NOT ONE of them specifically talks about gay marriage! Some of them, don't even talk about homosexuality! Do you get the feeling that maybe at some point the author got bored and wanted to pad the arguement a little by throwing in arbitrary verses?
There are other verses listed on the website, but as I look at them, they do not specifically address same sex marriage or the Bible "clearly" speaking out against it, as these people love to claim. I just don't see the validity of their argument. I can't find a single passage in the Bible that specifically forbids a man being able to marry a man or a woman being able to marry a woman.
There are, however, plenty of verses talking specifically about divorce and what an abomination that is. Yet there is a practice that is readily accepted in today's society. Gays getting married doesn't protect the sanctity of marriage, but it's okay for two people to get a divorce? Well, the Bible clearly states otherwise. Why is it that one is okay but not the other, especially when the other (gay marriage) is NOT clearly stated in the Bible as claimed?
The idea of Civil Unions has started coming up. In Washington State, gays have finally been given what we are calling "Everything but..." Gays in this state now have all the rights of heterosexual couples in marriage, we just can't call it marriage. While many see this as a victory for gay people in our state, I still can't help but see that they still want to see us as second class citizens. Fine! Go ahead and have your union, but you still can't call it marriage! Oh, but you will have to pay your taxes and your civil service just like every other citizen.
I am thankful to the people in our government who pushed for the recent legislation granting rights to gay people here. They have worked hard to get us that. It may not be exactly the same as marriage, but it is darn close. It's "everything but..."
Is it important that gays get the word "marriage?" I honestly don't think that it does. Sure, I just ranted in this blog about the semantics of the word. I guess in the end, what really matters is how the two men or the two women feel about each other. If their love is genuine, that's all that matters, isn't it? Do they have to call it marriage? I don't think it really matters.
My point in all this was to question the "logic" of anti-gay people. They throw out these verses from the Bible as damnable proof for their cause, but when you go and look at them, you find holes in the theory. More questions are raised than outright proof. Yet time and time again these verses are thrown into the argument as law. Those verses are held up as testament to the validity of the Bible while those other verses, the ones that speak against other things in practice today are ignored. That's selectiveness. They're just taking the verses that they think support their cause and "forgetting" about the other ones.
There is a word for that. It's called hypocrisy.
Today, the California Supreme Court ruled in favor of Proposition 8, continuing the ban on gay marriage in that state. A friend of mine said he wasn't surprised by the ruling. Back in November the people voted for it and it passed. It wouldn't make sense for the court to overturn a voter-approved proposition, wrong though it may be, because to do so would make people think that democracy doesn't work. I can see what he's saying, but at the same time, I'm saddened; not because of today's ruling, but because this issue went to the voters in the first place.
I have really tried to understand the anti-gay marriage defense. I have tried to find logic in their protests, their Bible verses, their actions. The more I look, the less logic I see. Instead, I see hypocrisy and double talk.
When I heard the news about Prop 8 in California, I started thinking, yet again, about this whole idea of the Bible's definition of marriage. Is it so clearly defined as people argue? I got out my NIV study Bible that I had in college and started looking up verses pertaining to marriage. One thing did become clear as I looked up the verses. Every single one of them were NOT official definitions. Not one! Instead, what I found were examples of marriage.
For one thing, all of the verses tended to start with one word: IF. "If a man marries a woman...", "If a man has recently married..." One verse actually said "For example..." (Romans 7:2-3). Are examples clear definitions as argued by the anti-gay marriage campaign? If I were to look up marriage in the Webster's Dictionary, would it say "For example, a man and a woman joining in union?" Actually, here's a fun fact! I did look up the word marriage on the Webster's online dictionary. Take a look at what I found.
As I looked at the "official" definition of marriage, I noticed that those were examples. So maybe an official definition is an example? Maybe those references in the Bible are "official definitions". If that is the case, then how do the people of today, who hold up these definitions of marriage in the Bible get around passages like
Romans 7:2-3 – For example, by law a married woman is bound to her husband as long as he is alive, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law of marriage. So then, if she marries another man while her husband is still alive, she is called an adultress. But if her husband dies, she is released from that law and is not an adultress even though she marries another man.
Woah! Does this mean that a woman who gets a divorce is a slut if she marries another man and her ex-husband is still alive?
Here's another verse I found interesting:
Hebrews 13:4 – Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral.
Nowhere in that verse does it say "Marriage between a man and a woman." It just says the word marriage with no "clear definition" of what that word means. Now it does say "sexually immoral" and I know that many would jump on that phrase and say "Right there! That's the case against homosexuality right there because the Bible clearly defines homosexuality as 'immoral'!" Okay, fine, even if you adopt that narrow view, I would still have to argue that it doesn't specifically say that a marriage is between a man and a woman. All it says is that "marriage should be honored by all." Interesting. Honored by ALL. Should ALL marriage also be honored? Just wondering.
I went to Google and typed in the words "gay marriage Bible". I was hoping to find websites that would tell me exactly how and where the Bible speaks against gay marriage. Here is the first website that popped up.
I thought this essay was very interesting. Not surprisingly, the author turns to the story of Sodom found in Genesis. Two angels of the Lord went to Sodom to find Lot and the men of the city followed them. They knocked on Lot's door and demanded that the two angels be sent out to them so they could have sex with them. Instead, Lot opted to send out his two virgin daughters and the men of Sodom had sex with them instead.
Okay, so here are my issues with this story and the defenses of the author of that website. First, how shitty is it that Lot sent his poor daughters out as replacements? This was the most holy man in all the city? This was the man that God sent His angels there to save? YIKES! Second, the men had sex with the woman. Well, if that's the case....they are they gay? I can tell you as a gay man, I have never had a desire to sleep with a woman. It just doesn't appeal to me. If I find a guy attractive and he sends out a woman and says, "Here, give this a try..." I'm going to walk away saying, "No thanks." So if those men of Sodom were such evil homosexual men, why were their sexual lusts satisfied by a couple of virgin chicks? They sound like creepy straight guys to me. Come to think of it, have you ever seen any pictures of angels? They look kind of....feminine, don't they? Could it be that these two pretty boys walked into the city and were mistaken as women? Just a thought.
So given all of that, is this as valid an example AGAINST gay marriage as the author of the website claims? In the summary, the author of the website lists this story under examples of the Bible "clearly" teaching that same sex marriage is wrong. But is this as "clear" an example as the author would like to believe? I find that hard to believe, myself.
To further discredit the list of Bible verses, under that same heading of the Bible clearly teaching against gay marriage, the author lists Judges 19:14. In my Bible, this is what the verse says: "So they went on, and the sun set as they neared Gibeah in Benjamin." Wow! That is very damning evidence against gay marriage there. I mean how can one argue against that? Clearly, that verse from the Bible is teaching that gay marriage is wrong! Right?
The author lists verses from Leviticus where, in another blog, I also pointed out other "sins and abominations" that Leviticus that today aren't considered sins.
Another verse listed under that same section as defense against gay marriage is Deuteronomy 23:17 - "No Israelite man or woman is to become a shrine prostitute." And the hard evidence against gay marriage is.....?
Another listed verse, 1 Kings 14:24 - "There were even male shrine prostitutes in the land; the people engaged in all the detestable practices of the nations of the Lord had driven out before the Israelites."
No Same Sex Marriage Biblical References in the Old Testament
The Bible clearly teaches no same sex marriage.
Genesis 19; Judges 19:14
Leviticus 18:22 and Leviticus 20:13
Deuteronomy 23:17; 1 Kings 14:24, 15:12, 22:46; 2 Kings 23:7
These are the verses from that section. I took that directly from the website. NOT ONE of them specifically talks about gay marriage! Some of them, don't even talk about homosexuality! Do you get the feeling that maybe at some point the author got bored and wanted to pad the arguement a little by throwing in arbitrary verses?
There are other verses listed on the website, but as I look at them, they do not specifically address same sex marriage or the Bible "clearly" speaking out against it, as these people love to claim. I just don't see the validity of their argument. I can't find a single passage in the Bible that specifically forbids a man being able to marry a man or a woman being able to marry a woman.
There are, however, plenty of verses talking specifically about divorce and what an abomination that is. Yet there is a practice that is readily accepted in today's society. Gays getting married doesn't protect the sanctity of marriage, but it's okay for two people to get a divorce? Well, the Bible clearly states otherwise. Why is it that one is okay but not the other, especially when the other (gay marriage) is NOT clearly stated in the Bible as claimed?
The idea of Civil Unions has started coming up. In Washington State, gays have finally been given what we are calling "Everything but..." Gays in this state now have all the rights of heterosexual couples in marriage, we just can't call it marriage. While many see this as a victory for gay people in our state, I still can't help but see that they still want to see us as second class citizens. Fine! Go ahead and have your union, but you still can't call it marriage! Oh, but you will have to pay your taxes and your civil service just like every other citizen.
I am thankful to the people in our government who pushed for the recent legislation granting rights to gay people here. They have worked hard to get us that. It may not be exactly the same as marriage, but it is darn close. It's "everything but..."
Is it important that gays get the word "marriage?" I honestly don't think that it does. Sure, I just ranted in this blog about the semantics of the word. I guess in the end, what really matters is how the two men or the two women feel about each other. If their love is genuine, that's all that matters, isn't it? Do they have to call it marriage? I don't think it really matters.
My point in all this was to question the "logic" of anti-gay people. They throw out these verses from the Bible as damnable proof for their cause, but when you go and look at them, you find holes in the theory. More questions are raised than outright proof. Yet time and time again these verses are thrown into the argument as law. Those verses are held up as testament to the validity of the Bible while those other verses, the ones that speak against other things in practice today are ignored. That's selectiveness. They're just taking the verses that they think support their cause and "forgetting" about the other ones.
There is a word for that. It's called hypocrisy.
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