A message to those opposing marriage equality.
As an atheist, I couldn’t care less if you practice a religion and are very devoted to your faith. It is your undeniable right to practice any faith you wish. Even though you might think it’s weird if I came up to you and said, “I still love you despite the fact that you’re religious,” I am totally used to and not really offended — though not particularly thrilled either — when you tell me that you love me despite me being gay. Thanks, bud. The thing is I don’t really care too much whether you love or hate my lifestyle, but I do care if you try to use your religious freedom to impede my rights as a citizen. If you want to think in your own head that I am committing a sin, that’s fine, but when you try to tell me I can’t marry the person I love then we have a problem. I guess you’re also entitled to be racist or sexist, but you can’t bring those opinions to the policies you make. Why? Because you’re not a deity and have no right to prescribe righteousness. Rant aside, let’s take a look at the infamous line in Leviticus.
Leviticus is a book of the Bible that focuses on regulations and rules, but it is not a book that talks about love or the proper definitions of families. However, it is used by many people are the moral reasoning for their opposition to same-sex marriage.
“If a man lies with a male as one lies with a woman, the two of them have done an abhorrent thing; they shall be put to death—their bloodguilt is upon them.” (Leviticus 20:13)
Although the Bible only explicitly refers to a man lying with another man, we generalize the statement to apply to both gay women and men. It is also significant to note the context of the law above. It is listed among laws that pertain to promiscuity and adultery (e.g.: If a man lies with his father’s wife, if a man lies with his daughter?in?law, etc.) rather than under regulations that define an ideal or proper family. There are no verses in the Bible that demonstrate God’s disapproval of monogamous homosexual couples or God’s urging for others to judge gay people. As mentioned earlier, Leviticus refers to the law banning homosexuality among other laws that describe promiscuity. Leviticus also writes about sins such as this, “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.” As stated by the group, Views on LGBT equality, “Leviticus approaches homosexual relationships as necessarily promiscuous, and possibly oppressive, because they never occurred in the context of loving families. The intent of these laws, then, is to forbid promiscuous relationships. Because the Torah does not directly address the issue of loving, monogamous, homosexual couples, we must turn to the more general ethical framework of the Torah for guidance.” Further, Genesis states, “God created humans in God’s image, in the image of God, God created them; male and female God created them.” (Genesis 1:27) If God created humans in His own image, then each human has been born the way God intended.
Homosexuality is in fact unnatural. But using that logic so is having sex for pleasure. Next time you’re in church after having a good session of premarital sex, please take a moment to reflect on your own sins instead of attacking me for mine. But in all seriousness, even if you have followed every rule in the Bible, unless you intend to proclaim that couples who have had premarital sex are also prohibited from getting married, don’t state a gay couple cannot get married without expecting to be called a bigot and a hypocrite.
Anonymous will love whomever they decide to love.
October 12, 2014 @ 10:10 pm
Back in biblical days, people lived in caves and ate rats for dinner. They didn’t know the earth was round. How much do we think they knew about human sexuality?
The scriptures were written by heterosexual men – not Jesus, not women, not gay men – but mere mortal heterosexual males who probably had the same fears as anyone in this modern age who doesn’t like people who are different than they are. Nature puts gay people on this planet. There will always be gay babies – maybe to cut down on over-population, maybe to cut down on the aggression of heterosexual males that lead us into wars every twenty years, etc. Edit out or ignore the anti-gay prejudice in the bible and Christianity’s problem with the issue will disappear.
Which brings me to my own personal theory: people who don’t ignore the anti-gay prejudice in the bible, don’t like gay people. I’m a Christian and I have never paid attention to it.
When asked about gays, gay marriage and the Baptist Church, Rev. Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary recently said that “we would indeed have to overturn two thousand years of the church’s teaching on sex and marriage and apologize for the horrible embarrassment of being wrong for so long.”
The smart move would be to admit to that mistake. Modern science is coming closer and closer to proving that homosexuality has a genetic component. Wouldn’t it be wiser for a church to admit it’s mistake now, with dignity, rather than later…when it is forced to?