Citation please.
I actually researched this a long time ago (read a big chunk of the old testmament) and remember it being a mixture of several passages, but it does not blantantly say "divorce = death" like how most of the laws are written in Numbers. This had more to do with adultery than divorce (my bad) but if the man was caught, he should be divorced from his wife and then put to death. Looking it up online I found these-- Deuteronomy 22:22, Leviticus 20:10, Proverbs 6:32
None of these verses support your claim that God condones divorce because it is ok.
And Proverbs is really a strawman. The book you've quoted is poetry. Poetry is just that. Poetry. It is not meant as a historic, narrative account.
So what?
Why should they listen to a suggestion from someone who doesn't care what they believe?
Because if a belief is withholding progress on a certain people, it causes major problems. Especially when those beliefs are old and outdated and most people disregard the whole lot of them and just use the convenient ones causing prejudices among good people.
The Bible's mention of homosexuality has nothing to do with the oppression or repression of gays, or the fact that the context of the Christian Church's relationship with homosexuality is different than relationships with liars, adulterers, greedy persons, or thieves because the Bible talks about these people in the same breath it talks about homosexuality; therefore we should look at the person who doesn't tithe in the exact same way as we look at gays. A "little fib" should be treated no differently from a gay kiss. Why is a lesbian eyed with condemnation but the drunk who beats his wife and children gets to take his place as a Sunday school teacher? Why is there support for a ban on gay marriage but divorce is lawful? Why is there moral outrage at a rainbow on somebody's car but nobody cares that less than 10% of Christians tithe? The answer is that Christian morality is just self-righteous moralism, that our indignation is actually self-serving because we're trying to make ourselves feel better. We don't believe in grace and hope and peace because we don't really believe in Jesus, and that's why our judgment on the other is always smug and never righteous. I think Yglesias explains a lot about the appeal of anti-gay crusades to social conservative leaders. Most of what “traditional values” asks of people is pretty hard. All the infidelity and divorce and premarital sex and bad parenting and whatnot take place because people actually want to do the things traditional values is telling them not to do. And the same goes for most of the rest of the Christian recipe. Acting in a charitable and forgiving manner all the time is hard. Loving your enemies is hard. Turning the other cheek is hard. Homosexuality is totally different. For a small minority of the population, of course, the injunction “don’t have sex with other men!” (or, as the case may be, other women) is painfully difficult to live up to. But for the vast majority of people this is really, really easy to do. Campaigns against gay rights, gay people, and gay sex thus have a lot of the structural elements of other forms of crusading against sexual excess or immorality, but they’re not really asking most people to do anything other than become self-righteous about their pre-existing preferences.
Homosexual discrimination is an issue in the American/Western culture war, not an issue that the Bible is interested in, although the WBC seems to believe otherwise. The fact that you don't see constitutional amendments popping up about Christians who divorce, don't tithe or televangelists demonstrates that the American right's stigma against homosexuals is not based in Paul's admonitions. They revile the other as a "*bleep*" and are just trying to maintain hold on their turf. That make him the scapegoat for their perpetuation of and participation in evil, for their lack of control and failure of virtue. That has nothing to do with what Paul (or the Levitical holiness code) was getting at.
Community Forum
Topic: Opinions on gay rights/marriage? (Read 18326 times)
November 26, 2009, 11:41:37 pm
