The Bible also teaches that we are not here to judge.
All those “Christians” who use the Bible as an excuse to Hate are confused (or theyre not and they just would rather Hate). The Bible doesnt tell Christians to Hate, it tells us to Love our Brothers and Sisters. These people are using the Bible as an excuse for their bigotry.
When ever people use the Bible in pieces, they will derive incorrect interpretations. The Bible is a complete work, not a snippet. Old Testament and New Testament are completely different works as well. The first is history, the second is clarification.
I would have – something like, “I’m sorry we have to defend ourselves from your ignorant bigoted attacks. I’m sorry you’re incapable of understanding that the writings of three-thousand-year-old goatherds are not the be-all and end-all of moral philosophy. And I’m sorry I waited as long as I did to put it this clearly.”
Dan Savage made a perfectly good argument, but he made it badly - in such a manner as to ensure that the message will not be heard by the audience he is presumably attempting to convince.
There is no question that pretty well all religious believers pick and choose what bits to believe. It is a perfectly good and valid argument to point out that the anti-gay bits of the Bible are by no means an essential teaching of Christianity or Judaism, any more than (say) those odd bits of Leviticus concerning the proper role of priestly sacrifices at a temple that no longer exists, Paul’s strange obsession about women’s hair, or the stuff telling slaves to obey masters.
However, you gotta engage the audience. The people you want to reach are presumably those who are actually being mislead by religious qualms into thinking homosexuality is condemned by God. To those people, it is going to be a lot easier to convince them that God has nothing to do with it - that the Bible, written by humans, contains lots of stuff specific to the time and place in which it was written and not to the modern world - than to simply use terms like “bullshit” (even if it is true). The former message may plant some sort of seeds, but the latter is just going to seem like a sneer.
I’m not saying that you can’t sneer at religion - I’m saying there is a time and a place. Sneering at religion isn’t doing any favours in that time and at that place. It will not advance the anti-bullying project.
Everybody who has a holy book does. I thought that qualification was implied. Maybe there are some people out there who have a two-page holy pamphlet that covers every possible situation and doesn’t contradict itself, but I haven’t heard of it.
In other words, there seem to be two claims being used interchangeably here:
That Christianity has no valid Scriptural basis for condemning homosexual behavior while accepting other behavior that the Scriptures equally prohibit; and
That Christians may not be well-educated as to the Scriptures that supposedly guide them.
It seems to me that if it’s true that the most often-quoted passage in this cause is Leviticus, you’ve made a good point in support of claim (2), but said nothing about claim (1).
And, in fact, the New Testament endorsement of slavery is more damning – the Old Testament simply sets forth “this is how it is” rules; the New Testament actively exhorts slaves to accept their status.
The argument is clearly directed at claim (1) – the religion-based rationalization for homophobia is untenable because it is based on obvious cherry-picking. Claim (2) is merely an explanation of why people are so ignorant as to advance arguments that lack valid basis, and has no bearing on the merits or lack thereof of the arguments themselves.
Again, there seem to be two claims here, and they seem to be considered interchangeably.
So far as I can tell, Blake is not making any arguments about claim (2) (“That Christians may not be well-educated as to the Scriptures that supposedly guide them.”)
His argument goes to claim (1): That Christianity has no valid Scriptural basis for condemning homosexual behavior while accepting other behavior that the Scriptures equally prohibit.
The citation’s arguments are not strong. Some scholars may feel that the Greek arsenokoitai is ambiguous; that is simply not the majority view. I suppose it’s “arguable,” but let’s face it: if I said anti-global-warming sentiments were “arguable” I’d be jumped on. Because even though there are scholars that disagree, the vast weight of scholarship points to the idea of human activity being a significant factor in global warming. Here. when the fringe scholastic view represents something you want to hear, you’re happy in calling it “arguable.” When a similar weight of scholarship reaches a conclusion you don’t like, then it’s the work of “deniers.”
The other arguments seem to be that the behavior is not especially condemned, but simply appears in a list of bad behaviors. True enough, but I don’t know too many Christians proclaiming that drunken revelry is a great thing, either. The stronger reaction to homsexuality is, I think, the reaction caused by debate. That is, if Christians are louder in condemning homosexual behavior, it may be because there is a strong movement arguing for its acceptance, with no such similar voice standing up for the drunken revelers.
Finally, the point is made that the New Testament includes a passage seemingly accepting of slavery.
Yes. So did the US Constituion. The passage does not mandate the institution of slavery. How does this invalidate anything?
What else needs to be argued for point 1? If it can be shown that any prohibition for homosexuality is identical to that applied to other forms of behaviour that christians now tolerate, what further argument could be required that there is an immoral double standard being applied?
But since the Christian doctrine includes an explanation for why the OT mandates against, say, shellfish no longer apply to Christians, the OT passages are not valid fodder to use in support of the cherry-picking claim.
I cannot say the US Constitution supports slavery now, and prove my point by showing the clauses about importation of labor, because a subsequent docuement reversed the effect of those passages. The 13th amendment prohibited slavery, and if I wanted to claim that the Constitution says anything about slavery, it has to be an argument that uses only post-13th amendment information.
So, too, here. The NT supersedes the OT, in Christian thinking, and that “amendment” is laid out in Hebrews 8:8-12. You cannot argue that the Christian failure to adhere to shellfish regulations is violative of anything, or that it is cherry-picking.
Statements from the old testament no longer apply.
This claim is demonstrably incorrect, as it is the old testament that is commonly quoted to condemn homosexuality. As such, it is important to show that the prohibition in the OT comes amongst the oft quoted bans on shellfish, mixed fabricsm etc
The prohibition in the new Testament does not suffer from the same flaws.
To respond to this, it is important to show that either:
a) They are indeed part of a list of behaviour types that do not get the same ire, or
b) The translation that has been used is questionable, making it arguable whether homosexuality is actually the offence being castigated.
Those are the only points that have been addressed here.
Is this an accurate representation of the weight of Biblical scholarship? I have certainly heard the argument that arsenokoitai is ambiguous, but I guess it’s possible that this is only a fringe view.
I would point out that there at least a few mainstream Christian churches that are welcoming of homosexual members, which would seem to give some weight to the argument that Biblical understanding doesn’t require disapproval of homosexuality.
There are other (perhaps “bullshit”) provisions in the NT regarding women not speaking in church or cutting their hair as well. Most Christians are happy to disregard those. And I don’t know very many sects at all that give much weight to Paul’s claim that it is better for men to remain unmarried virgins.
I don’t think this is completely true, for a couple of reasons. For one, it’s not like every single kid walked out. The most religious, most easily offended kids did, and it’s not exactly a sure thing that they would have paid much heed to the gay sex columnist in the first place.
Secondly, my own time in high school overlaps with Dans’s career, and I can tell you that he was hugely influential on me and my friends.Remember, bullying isn’t (or doesn’t have to be) a one-to-one thing. When the kids on the sidelines have good reasons to tell the bullies they’re full of shit - or at the very least tell the bullied kids that their tormentors are full of shit - it does get a bit better. And if the kids have already been talking about stuff like gay rights & slut shaming & all kinds of other Savage Love topics, they’ve got a framework for thinking that isn’t immediately " ew, gross" when they hear about something new.
I’d go with this. Dan has a lot of air time to fill (see his show on MTV) and he is a bit of a smartass, which is fun. Just doesn’t work well when he is using his well honed smart-mouth on kids. It is, in fact, the very bullying he is trying to fight.
Besides, I’m not sure it’s a service to gay rights to set up the whole movement as a “Gays vs. Christianity” thing.
The argument offered thus far draws from the OT list. As I explained above, the OT is not the authority that the NT is, and the mere fact that it is often quoted as the authority for the prohibition is an example of the ignorance mentioned in (2).
What behaviors do you contend are not condemned by Christians, but should be, thus showing an “immoral double standard?”
The fact that homophobes cite the OT passages is the proof of the cherry-picking claim, not the mere existence of the passages.
The fact is that some people are doing the equivalent of showing the clauses about the importation of labor. This is the “cherry-picking” at issue.
In any case, even restricting oneself to NT citations doesn’t avoid the cherry-picking of (for example) rejecting the verses exhorting slaves to accept their status.
Well, there are a couple of pretty dodgy things about head coverings and women speaking in church:
These are both from the New Testament and pretty widely ignored, IME. They probably don’t rise to the level of requiring condemnation, I suppose, but aren’t that different from the instruction regarding avoidance of homosexual behavior.
I think Savage’s word choice essentially suggests that religious people *should *pick and choose which parts of the Bible they want to believe in, and that weakens his argument. Instead of saying “Let’s ignore the bullshit in the Bible,” it would have been far more on point to say, “Let’s ignore the bullshit *that is *the Bible.”
Of course, that surely would have created an even bigger shitstorm.
