Tuesday, December 16, 2008

The Bible's case for gay marriage

There's nothing I like better than poking holes in religious conservative arguments.

Thanks Newsweek.

Gay Marriage: Our Mutual Joy

About why gay marriage is not spoken against specificially by the Bible, and in fact, argues for it.
Religious objections to gay marriage are rooted not in the Bible at all, then, but in custom and tradition (and, to talk turkey for a minute, a personal discomfort with gay sex that transcends theological argument). Common prayers and rituals reflect our common practice: the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer describes the participants in a marriage as "the man and the woman." But common practice changes—and for the better, as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. said, "The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice." The Bible endorses slavery, a practice that Americans now universally consider shameful and barbaric. It recommends the death penalty for adulterers (and in Leviticus, for men who have sex with men, for that matter). It provides conceptual shelter for anti-Semites. A mature view of scriptural authority requires us, as we have in the past, to move beyond literalism. The Bible was written for a world so unlike our own, it's impossible to apply its rules, at face value, to ours.

Love that quote by Martin Luther King, Jr. I just keep repeating that to myself when thinking of social change.

3 comments:

Terra said...

Makes sense to me. I've never understood why the religious right can amp up the idea that the Bible opposes homosexuality while ignoring other, similarly anti-justice biblical sentiments.

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