God made Adam and Steve, too

[martasfic]

The text, for anyone struggling to read it:”It’s not Adam and Steve, neither Madam nor Eve.
Give your life to Christ, he’ll set you STRAIGHT.”

The US Supreme Court is about to hear testimony on two cases involving gay marriage, which means the internet (or at least my corner of it) is buzzing with talk about homosexuality and gay marriage. I think a lot of the trouble people have with that issue is that the pro- and anti-gay marriage crowds are talking about marriage in slightly – sometimes not-so-slightly – different ways.

I want to get to that, and will. But every time I sit down to blog about it, my mind gets drawn almost immediately to the bad interpretations lots of Christians seem stuck in when it comes to certain Bible passages people think of when it comes to gay marriage. Interestingly, a lot of Christians from both sides of the aisle on gay rights tend to read these Bible verses in the same way. Many liberal Christians will agree that Leviticus 18:22 says gay sex is immoral, and they solve it by focusing on Jesus. I don’t think this is necessary; these verses only seem to be condemning homosexuality because they’ve been pretty widely mistranslated and misinterpreted.

So before I take on the marriage issue, I want to lay out what I think the Bible says about homosexuality. To be clear up front, I don’t think this has a whole lot of bearing on the marriage issue; whether a multicultural and secular society should let LGBT people get married is a very different question from whether a  my religion condemns same-sex relationships and same-sex activity. But I hope it’s interesting in any case.

 

Sodom and Gomorrah

Read the rest of this entry »

Originally published at Faith Seeking Understanding. You can comment here or there.

Comments

[engarian.livejournal.com]

why are you bringing the issue to the forefront with the article about the "pending" Supreme Court decision? The decision was made in June of this year, the article you refer to was published in March of this year.

I'm not saying it's not a pertinent issue. On the contrary, until all 50 states and the various territories finally acknowledge that gay rights are civil rights it is an issue that needs to be kept up front and in the news. I'm just wondering why you selected this issue to discuss at this time? It seems that this close to Christmas there are other Christian discrepancies or interpretations that might be better suited such as the actual time of year of Christ's birth and were the loaves and fishes a true miracle or simply a misinterpretation of an event.

Anyway, just curious...

- Erulisse (one L)

[marta-bee.livejournal.com]

Oh, dear, I didn't know this would show up here again. This is an old blog post that I linked to over on FaceBook because a friend and I were discussing the Bible on homosexuality in light of the Duck Dynasty actor's comments about homosexuality being a sin. At which point I noticed a few typos, went in to edit it, and apparently it showed up in people's LJ friends' feeds again. But the post was originally written around the time of the Supreme Court case.

Sorry for any confusion...