RE: Count the Ways
The first group has my support, they really do. I find it unfortunate that homosexuals are not granted equal protection under the law in the United States of America. Marriage is no longer a sacred institution, it is a legal contract between two people to safe guard their financial and legal interests in the inevitability that the contract is dissolved.
The major group that is working to block the realization of equal protection under the law for homosexual couples is the religious right in America. I cannot speak for the politics of other countries; I do not follow your social policy closely and from reading pages from the United Kingdom, Canada, and other English speaking countries neither do you follow ours well.
However, misunderstanding Christians and Christianity is one of the reasons that leftist social movements have trouble gaining traction with the this demographic. I know you like to consider yourself liberal but stop deluding yourself a liberal would understand, appreciate, respect and disagree with a contrary opinion. You are leftist because you just think the people are stupid and hate you, not unlike any girl in third grade who is out of the clique this week. �They (being the people who disagree with you) are stupid! I hate them!�
Understanding your opposition is key to winning any debate. The following writing (I am not sure what to call it, beside ignorant) is an example of NOT understanding your opposition and presenting rhetoric that alienates the people who wish to win over. The following is an excellent way to motivate your base of support but it does NOTHING to expand that base.
Count the Ways
"An engineering professor is treating her husband, a loan officer, to dinner for finally giving in to her pleas to shave off the scraggly beard he grew on vacation. His favorite restaurant is a casual place where they both feel comfortable in slacks and cotton/polyester-blend golf shirts. But, as always, she wears the gold and pearl pendant he gave her the day her divorce decree was final. They're laughing over their menus because they know he always ends up diving into a giant plate of ribs but she won't be talked into anything more fattening than shrimp.
Quiz: How many biblical prohibitions are they violating?
Well, wives are supposed to be 'submissive' to their husbands (I Peter 3:1). And all women are forbidden to teach men (I Timothy 2:12), wear gold or pearls (I Timothy 2:9) or dress in clothing that 'pertains to a man' (Deuteronomy 22:5). Shellfish and pork are definitely out (Leviticus 11:7, 10) as are usury (Deuteronomy 23:19), shaving (Leviticus 19:27) and clothes of more than one fabric (Leviticus 19:19). And since the Bible rarely recognizes divorce, they're committing adultery, which carries the rather harsh penalty of death by stoning (Deuteronomy 22:22). So why are they having such a good time? Probably because they wouldn't think of worrying about rules that seem absurd, anachronistic or--at best--unrealistic. Yet this same modern-day couple could easily be among the millions of Americans who never hesitate to lean on the Bible to justify their own anti-gay attitudes."
--From lesbian columnist Deb Price's book, "And Say Hi To Joyce."
We are going to use a Gilbert/Curtis debate tactic called, �Lump and Dump,� which means to group all of the arguments that can be responded to in a similar fashion, group the together and respond to them as one argument instead of the collection of incoherent statements they were originally presented as.
Old Testament, or Talmudic Law
This includes the verses misconstrued from Deuteronomy and Leviticus.
Tori Amos muses in one of her songs (I cannot look it up, her complete discography was permanently borrowed from me about a year ago) that Christianity changes whether you follow Peter or Paul. That is absolutely true and your assignment is to find a mainstream Christian group practicing in the Western World that follows Peter�s theological thinking, you will fail at that endeavor. The Roman Catholic Church points to Peter as the first Pope, but excluding a few groups in Africa, Christianity is Pauline (meaning we trend towards following Paul�s theology).
Paul�s theology is predicated on a couple of ideas and one of them is a new covenant with God through Christ. One of the earliest controversies in the church stemmed from the fact that it is made up, like every other organization, by humans. Peter and Paul did not get along and they rarely agreed on important issues, but one of their arguments was settled by a vision of Christ that Peter received on a mission trip where he was visiting Gentiles.
This account, which can be found in the Acts of the Apostles (the fifth book in the New Testament), details how Peter was unsure of how to approach the laws outlined in the Talmud when he was staying with people who did not follow those regulations. in Peter�s vision, a sheet descends from Heaven with several of the animals that the laws of the Talmud would have forbade Peter from eating. God commands Peter to kill and eat, Peter protests that the animals are impure and unclean. God responds by telling Peter that he has made these things clean and it is okay to eat them. They go back and forth three times. The sheet returns to heaven. Peter can have the pizza with pepperoni that the Romans are sharing with him. The law of the Talmud
The point is that when Jesus came to Earth, died on the Cross, defeated death and Satan, and returned to heaven He formed a new covenant with us. We can eat and wear what we want, but our behaviors are dictated in following the brief instructions from Christ, the second of them being �Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and all your mind. And, love your neighbor as you love yourself.�
Part of loving God is abstaining from actions he finds abominable. Part of loving God is sacrificing things you want because he does not want them for you. This does not just include sexual sins but a myriad of vices that I will not list here. Part of loving your neighbor is refraining from leading him or her into sin as well.
You do not have to agree with that but you do have to respect the fact the people you are trying to persuade DO agree with that idea. You have to appreciate that worldview in order to change it into one that is amiable to your worldview.
Christians do not see a contradiction in abstaining from the Old Testament Health and Diet Code while adhering to moral standards that God asked us to trust him by following. My twenty-six years are a lifetime of trusting and following a God who has loved and taken care of me. There have been sacrifices and failures on my part, I never claim to be perfect, but I will stake the claim that I am forgiven and loved by God.
I often hear the argument, �If God loved me�� and they want to finish the sentence with, �he would want me to be happy,� or something akin to the that but I finish their sentence for them ��he would, like any good parent, not let you do whatever you felt like doing because it made you happy, it is not always healthy to be happy.�
Also, the �sheet from heaven� is clearly a flying carpet.
The second set of verses are from the New Testament, and are again taken out of their historical, theological, and literary contexts.
The New Testament and Covenant with God
The verses from Timothy refer back to a part of Paul�s ministry where he had to adapt Christianity to the local culture where it was trying to take root. Many of those �rules,� are not supposed to be applied universally. Those rules were specific instructions to certain populations. In many instances the church had to separate itself from the local paganism where things like prostitution, human sacrifice, and child molestation � just to name a few � were practiced. I have to admit that the pearls and gold one was a new one that I had not encountered before but when I looked it up, again, this is taken out of context. A surprise of surprises and comes from a section of the New Testament where Paul is saying, �do not dress nice, or having nice things,� he is saying that we should not �clothe� ourselves in our material wealth as a symbol of our status, we should �clothe� ourselves in the good deeds we do out of holy love and charity. It is not that you cannot wear jewelry, it is that you should not pride yourself on jewelry or be known for the rocks that you have got. In the end, you are still Jenny from the block and will be judged by what you did, not what you owned.
The wives submitting to husbands is misconstrued by tons of people but if you read that part of the Bible, which the person who posted that in their diary and the original author did not do closely or fairly if they did it at all, you would know that this part of Paul�s Epistles where women are not so much told to �shut up and put up,� but the roles of people in the family are explained.
We are, in short, supposed to take care of each other. Insofar as a family where the man is in charge and everyone follows along like it is John Ashcroftland UnAmusedment Park, well, no one but that guy from �The 700 Club� who also advocated blowing up the State Department advocates that. My Uncle Danny believes that too and he is a group that meets in Canada to overthrow Senator Clinton because they believe she is the Antichrist. We are not talking sane people. We are talking about the people who stock pile guns and food, keep their kids out of schools and do not vaccinate them, and complain about the government while they wait with their friends for the welfare check.
Martin Luther, to whom everything good in Western Civilization can be traced back to, did not even buy into that interpretation allowing women to teach and commenting that he spiritually led his family but in everything else, in true to Homer Simpson fashion, he let his wife take the lead. No one believes that women should be barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen. Martin Luther let women teach. Martin Luther gave control of his own household to someone capable, his wife. Who, by the way, is the prototype for Theresa Heinz Kerry.
I did skip the divorce, stoning thing but my church is not big on either of those things. I really think that anyone should consider what they are doing before they decide to �tie the knot.� If we thought about it first before we did it, we might not do it in the end.
So finally, I start to wrap this up�
This misconstruction of biblical ideas, rules, and regulation is a great example of how this or any other Holy Book can be used, abused, and misused to support any idea that you want. Close reading of any holy book, at least Western ones, will tell you that every religion strives to lead people toward happier, more fulfilled lives.
Religious people can seem nutty but faith is an emotion, and emotions are not logical processes. If you are trying to persuade religious people to see your point of view you are going to have to understand their views first. Once you understand their view you can change it.
In order to get the equality that you want, that you deserve, you are going to need to do that. Saying clever, but ultimately hateful and frankly ignorant things, will only alienate people and make your path to equality that much longer.
I will write about the group I don�t support later. This is five pages long and I do not believe anyone has read this far down anyway.
