Leviticus 18:22 & 20:13 “Is everything detestable to these people?”

It’s been a while since I worked on this series. Even longer for those of you reading this on my personal blog (The Snark Who Hunts Back) as opposed to the articles on Queerlandia. (Yes, they are posted in both places. It’s relevant to both blogs).

Here is the review of the original documentary that this information comes from, for the most part.

And the first 3 sections  of verses. Genesis 1:1-31, Genesis 2,   Genesis 19:1-29.

I’m writing about both Leviticus verses in one post today. Each verse on it’s own would be terribly short and both have some similar issues.

“‘Do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman; that is detestable.”

- Leviticus 18:22

“‘If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.”

- Leviticus 20:13

Before we get to bogged down in analysis of this verse, I would like to mention that Leviticus 18 (in fact all of Leviticus) is a lot more complicated than a simple book of the Bible that tells a story like the Gospels, or Esther or Ruth (my two favorite books of the Bible, if you want to know). It is ritual and theological moral and legal code that was devised to govern the priest class (Levites) and the other tribes of Israel. The code was established by people interpreting theological ritual into rules for a society. I know of no serious Biblical scholar that refers to Leviticus as a book that was “inspired” by god.

Now that we have that out of the way.

Let’s talk about the actual meaning of these verses.

First we hear from Reverend Gregory Dell and Dr. Amy Jill Levine on the purpose behind these two particular verses.

The purity codes, the holiness codes from which Leviticus 18 is taken had a very specific design. And that design was to help distinguish themselves from the other cultures and faiths around them.

- Reverend Gregory Dell

The text is interested in categories and everyone and everything fits into an appropriate category. The categories do not mix.

- Dr. Amy Jill Levine

Then of course there is the constant issue that we find with Leviticus.

All we ever hear about from religious fundamentalists is “homosexuality is an abomination – Leviticus 18:22″.

What they seem to forget, is that Leviticus was a code of conduct for a people group over 2,000 years ago and they had a lot of funky ideas about proper behavior and what was an “abomination”.

[I]f one in the church must insist on using Leviticus then it seems only appropriate for those members of the Christian church to look at other laws in Leviticus.

*

To pick and choose which laws to follow and which laws not to follow, at the very least we need to determine why are we choosing this law and not that law.

- Dr. Amy Jill Levine

In chapter 18 of Leviticus alone there are at least 19 prohibitions against different types of sexual relations.

That’s not to mention the incredible amount of truly odd things that are mentioned in the book (as well as the rest of the Old Testament) as being “abominations” and “detestable” outside of sex.*

One of the prohibitions mentioned specifically in the documentary is Leviticus 18:19.

“‘Do not approach a woman to have sexual relations during the uncleanness of her monthly period.”

When this is mentioned, Pastor David Ickes had this to say.

Okay, but still, how does that support homosexuality? All that does is tell me that we should start preaching against people sleeping with their wives on their cycle. That doesn’t give you any justification whatsoever.

Okay, so here is where I earn the name of my personal blog, because hoo-boy does this comment deserve a lot of snark.

Where do I start? (this could almost be a blog of it’s own).

First thing. He says “people sleeping with their wives”. People? Shouldn’t that be “men sleeping with their wives.”? For someone that is all about heterosexual marriage, he’s being very PC in his language.

Secondly, the point wasnotthat the sheer number of silly prohibitions invalidated the one about homosexuality. (We’ll get to that later). The point was that you can’t run around preaching that homosexuality is an abomination and ignore all the other rules that you and your congregation are breaking without looking like a horribly hypocrite.

If there is one thing that I truly hate in this world, it’s a hypocrite. I don’t use the word ‘hate’ lightly.

Third. So why don’t you preach to men and tell them not to have sex with their wives during their period or the 7 days after it?
Try it. You’ll be laughed off the pulpit. People are happy to listen to prohibitions on other people’s sex lives, but a pastor who starts telling people how and when to have sex with their spouse and you will be out of a parish really damn quick.
That’s the same reason why most churches, even the American Catholic church, barely even look askance at divorce anymore. Or remarriage after divorce. That second one, specifically, carries a penalty of death in the Bible.

Okay, now I’ll leave Ickes alone. He’s not all that bright it seems, but that isn’t the point of this post.

Here’s where the real issue of this verse becomes clear.

This verse isn’t, just like the rest of these verses, talking about homosexuality at all.

What Leviticus actually says is “A man shall not lie with a man, as a woman”. In other words ‘a man shall not treat another man, sexually, as if that other man were female.

- Dr. Amy Jill Levine

Greek homosexuality had the same concept. Men were not women, you could have sex with them, but you couldn’t treat them like a women. You could even have a relationship with another man (as women could with women, y’know…Sappho) but that man would not be another women. He was intrinsically going to be more than a women, based on that culture, and he would be more your equal.

Every woman in that time was the property of some man. A part of the way you claimed and made this property your own was the consummation of the marriage through intercourse. If you have sex with a virgin who isn’t properly betrothed to you, you have damaged another mane’s property.  So all of thsi is really just property law and according to the understanding of this law code a man cannot own another man like that.

- Reverend Dr. Fred Neidner

Guess what…you can’t own anyone that way in this country in this day and age. So does that make heterosexual marriage invalid as well?

*List compiled at Canyonwalker Connections by Kathy.

National Coming Out Day

That’s what today is and since I’m not really interested in typing up my whole coming out story again (I think I’ve written that post several times already, in different forms) I’ll just post links to a few articles that I’ve written that I feel should be read by gay people every where. One is about coming out to my parents and the rest are about gay people and their involvement in politics. So of it is flattering, some of it is not. *shrug*

Ignoring things, another skill my mother is a master of

On New Year’s Eve I finally decided that enough was enough, I was going to start this year with a clean slate and as a part of that, I came out to my parents. There were several reactions I could have gotten…most of them were not so good when I imagined them. I psyched myself out for the absolute worst reaction possible; among the things involved where yelling, thrown objects and being disowned.

Gay rights vs. …every other issue.

I don’t know why I do this, but I can’t seem to stop myself.

I have a bone to pick with the liberal gay community.

Normalize or Marginalize: What’s your preference?

This sort of breaks my brain to even think about, but, apparently, there are actually gay people who PREFER to be a marginalized part of society. I can’t even pretend to understand their view point, though I’ve been trying valiantly for the last few hours.

X-Men: It’s okay to be gay…uh…a mutant (okay, this isn’t a perfect metaphor)

I made a comment on my Tumblr account the other day to a friend who had just seen the new X-Men: First Class movie. I told her that the whole X-Men story line was a very poorly concealed “It’s okay to be gay” message. I was later corrected by a friend that told me that, at the time of it’s creation, X-Men was more about racism…which I can believe. However, if you watch the films made in the last 11 years, X-Men, X-Men 2 and X-Men: The Last Stand, (though not Origins as far as I could tell) you will see that the metaphor has already been easily adapted to fit the plight of the modern homosexual.

Pride

Pride, one of the Seven Deadly Sins…if you believe in that sort of thing, which I don’t.

I don’t see anything wrong with having pride in yourself and your accomplishments. I have pride whenever I finish writing a particular good piece of fiction or a blog post that has just the right ratio of snark to facts. I have pride that I got into the school of Journalism, that I’m finally able to go back to college. I still have pride that I got into a prestigious school, based on my writing portfolio, even though I never attended classes at that university.

I take pride in things that I accomplish on my own, things that I’ve worked hard at.

Unfortunately I don’t understand the usage of the word pride that gets tossed around. Like Gay Pride, or Women’s Pride (Yes, these events do exist.)

Fish Out Of Water (2009) Ky Dickens – A Summary/Review

While I don’t think it’s my job to dictate other people’s moral principle’s or the moral principles of their religion I do think that any person who is going to spout off about what their religion says about any particular social or moral practice needs to be well informed and hear about the issue from scholars on all sides of the topic, not just their side, before making any conclusions on what and who their god hates.

(There are several posts linked at the end of this one that go to posts I’ve made about the verses discussed in this documentary)

Here’s hoping you find these interesting.

I’m fairly sure Mrs. Belforti doesn’t quite understand the concept of Freedom of Religion

About a month ago I wrote a post about city clerk’s in New York state that didn’t want to do their jobs because they involved signing marriage licenses for same-sex partners.

If the job you want to have is likely to conflict with your personal convictions, which you can’t compromise, then you need to find another line of work.

If your job changes, a new duty is added to it (such as signing same-sex marriage licenses) which you cannot do then you also need to find new employment. You might have been their first, but that does not mean you have the right to expect special treatment at your job.

What’s even more unsettling is this is just the latest action in a trend that has begun. A trend of people demanding special exemptions from doing their jobs.

Today I’m following up on that post, because one of the clerks got herself a front page story in the New York Times.

Rose Marie Belforti is a 57-year-old cheese maker, the elected town clerk in this sprawling Finger Lakes farming community and a self-described Bible-believing Christian. She believes that God has condemned homosexuality as a sin, so she does not want to sign same-sex marriage licenses; instead, she has arranged for a deputy to issue all marriage licenses by appointment.

As I said in the other post I linked to, the fact that she is allowed to believe in any religion she wishes in the country, does not give her the right to not do her job.

Belforti doesn’t get that, she seems to think that Freedom of Religion means “Freedom to not do my job, but still get paid for it, if a part of my duties go against my religious morals.”

Which she essentially says.

“New York law protects my right to hold both my job and my beliefs,” she said in an interview last week, pausing briefly to collect $50 from a resident planning to take 20 loads of refuse to the town dump. “I’m not supposed to have to leave my beliefs at the door at my government job.”

She’s exactly right. In fact, federal law protects her right to hold her job and her beliefs, as well as state law. She does, however, have to check her beliefs at the door to a certain extent. Just as teacher’s in public schools can’t hold public prayers or put a Bible, Qran, or Talmud on their desk or push certain religious beliefs on their students. You’re beliefs are your own and you are entitled to hold them without fear of repercussions…as long as you do not force those views on other people or use them to justify not doing your job.

The facts are that the state of New York now allows same-sex marriage, therefore a town clerks job now includes the duty of providing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. This is the way things are now. Either get with the program or find a new program, don’t try to change the rules of your job to suit you.

Belforti wouldn’t be the first town clerk to disagree with the new changes in New York. So far two town clerks have resigned over the issue. Belforti is the first to try to change the rules and keep her job, by claiming her religion protects her from being fired for not doing her job. *rolls eyes*

Governor Cuomo is not buying Belforti’s argument. He said “When you enforce the laws of the state, you don’t get to pick and choose,” and issued a memorandum to clerks that refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples would be a misdemeanor.

“For me to participate in the same-sex marriage application process I don’t feel is right,” she said. “God doesn’t want me to do this, so I can’t do what God doesn’t want me to do, just like I can’t steal, or any of the other things that God doesn’t want me to do.”

Yes, well, your job doesn’t require you to steal. It does require you to give out marriage licenses.

What’s more annoying is that this job is not her only job, she barely spends any time doing it (9 hours a week) and she was voted into office. This job is not necessary to her survival, so it sounds like it’s time for her to get out of the job if it’s such an imposition on her religious morals.

Belforti, for her part, doesn’t seem to know why she’s fighting this fight. First she says:

“This is about religious freedom,” she said. “This is not about trashing gay people.”

And then she said:

Ms. Belforti said she had no regrets. Her re-election campaign literature consists of a handout that trumpets her maintenance of nine different record-keeping computer databases and the town’s Web site. She also notes that she is facing a challenger, “because I have taken a stand on same-sex marriage.”*

*My emphasis.

Which is it Mrs. Belforti? Were you taking a stand for religious freedom (in a completely ridiculous and idiotic way, might I add) or taking a stand against gay couples?

As for the town in which this is occurring?

“You get about a 50-50 split,” said Jim Wilcox, 42, who runs the white-clapboard Wilcox General Store and who got his own marriage license from Ms. Belforti a few years ago. He called the Marriage Equality Act “a long time coming” and worried that the controversy could paint Ledyard in a bad light. “We’d hate to be the ones who slowed down the wheels of change here,” he said.

Another resident, Ed Easter, is now seeking to defeat Ms. Belforti in a write-in campaign when she is up for re-election in November. Mr. Easter, 40, who works in a wine tasting room, said he felt that someone needed to challenge her, rather than assuming the courts would eventually settle the matter.

“The easiest way for her to go, and to settle this whole issue, is to take it to a vote — just vote her out of office,” he said.

I have to agree with Ed Easter. She was voted in, she can be voted out. But in interest of this not happening again, it needs to be made clear that you must do the job you are hired/voted in to do regardless of your personal, political, or religious beliefs.If you don’t want to perform those duties…well this is not the USSR, you are free to quit your job and seek other employment.

That’s the way America works.

In closing, I’ll mention that the verse that Mrs. Belforti read to the NYTimes reporter

A Protestant who worships at several area churches, Ms. Belforti read to a reporter a passage from the first chapter of Romans, which she says condemns homosexual activity, offering it as an explanation for her stance.

Is likely Romans 1:26-27, which is mentioned in my Fish Out of Water review. I will be addressing that verse and why it does not, in fact, condemn homosexuality as Mrs. Belforti claims.

Genesis 19:1-29 “Sodom and Gomorrah”

(3 of 7 from the Biblical verses “condemning” homosexuality in the documentary Fish Out Of Water.)

(Genesis 1:1-31 and Genesis chapter 2)

It’s been an unconscionably long time since I worked on this series of posts, feel free to harass me for that.

I’ve already done one post about Sodom and Gomorrah, but I did want to address the topic again because of some of the arguments used by the scholars in the documentary. It amazes me that sometimes a new argument can still come out of left field and surprises me. With a lot of these verses I thought I knew all of the arguments for and against them.

So the verses that the story of Sodom and Gomorrah come from can be found here.

Now, I highly doubt that anyone who knows anything about Christian mythology/theology is unaware of the story of Sodom. The term “Sodomites” (coined in the late 13th or early 14th century) is pulled from the name of this city, based on an idea that Sodom was destroyed for sexual immorality.

But that’s simply not true, not based on the translations and interpretations that modern Biblical scholars have found.

Sodom was the story of the failure to provide hospitality. It is the failure to honor the stranger in your midst.

-Rev. Gregory Dell

My favorite animation in the entire documentary begins here, to go along with Bishop John Shelby Spong’s rather snarky telling of the Sodom and Gomorrah story. Why is it my favorite? Because the two angel’s are complete and total hipsters…nothing is better than that.

These two angels go into Sodom and they sit on the curb in the town square, waiting to see if someone will offer them hospitality and as it gets later and later in the evening, the people in the village begin to say “ah, we’re gonna have some entertainment tonight.” You know, they didn’t have television of the Yankees to watch.

And then Lot, around sundown, comes out and offers the hospitality of his home. That frustrates all these people ans so they go storming  to Lot’s home, every man in the village it says, including the two sons who are engaged to be married to Lot’s daughters.

Hmm…I guess they weren’t all exactly homosexuals then were they.

And they beat on the tent of Lot and demanded that these visitors be brought out so that they might “know” them. The word “know in Hebrew carried sexual connotations. “And Adam knew Eve and she conceived” is sort of the same word.

And Lot refuses, because he says “I’ve given my word.”

Of course Lot isn’t exactly blameless, not when you see what he says in verse 8.

⁸ Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a man. Let me bring them out to you, and you can do what you like with them. But don’t do anything to these men, for they have come under the protection of my roof.”

Yeah…

The angels suddenly discover they have angelic power at that time and they blind everybody in the crowd. Then the angel says to Lot and his wife and their two daughters.

“¹² The two men said to Lot, “Do you have anyone else here—sons-in-law, sons or daughters, or anyone else in the city who belongs to you? Get them out of here, ¹³ because we are going to destroy this place. The outcry to the LORD against its people is so great that he has sent us to destroy it.” “

Of course, if you know the story. The two son-in-laws believe that Lot is crazy and for some reason God decides that if any of Lot’s family looks back at Sodom while fleeing they will be turned into a pillar of salt. So by the end of their escape, the only people left are Lot and his two daughters.

Spong continues with the story…this being the part that people generally leave out, since it sort of destroys the whole moral high ground that Lot’s family had in this situation.

But where do you go? They wanted to go to the next village, but they knew what happened to strangers  when you come into a village without protection. So they decided they wouldn’t do that. So they decided to go up into the mountains to live in a cave.

And the two daughters suddenly awaken to the fact that in the law of the world in which they live the only place they can get husbands was from their tribe.

And so this is what happens in verses 31 through 36.

³¹ One day the older daughter said to the younger, “Our father is old, and there is no man around here to give us children—as is the custom all over the earth. ³²Let’s get our father to drink wine and then sleep with him and preserve our family line through our father.”

³³ That night they got their father to drink wine, and the older daughter went in and slept with him. He was not aware of it when she lay down or when she got up.

³⁴ The next day the older daughter said to the younger, “Last night I slept with my father. Let’s get him to drink wine again tonight, and you go in and sleep with him so we can preserve our family line through our father.” ³⁵ So they got their father to drink wine that night also, and the younger daughter went in and slept with him. Again he was not aware of it when she lay down or when she got up.

³⁶ So both of Lot’s daughters became pregnant by their father.

Spong ends by saying, with a rather incredulous look on his face. “That story is used to condemn homosexuality?”

Yeah, I’m a little iffy on how that works as well.

The Sodom and Gomorrah story is, by all modern Biblical scholars, primarily a story about violations of hospitality.

- Rev. Dr. Fred Neidner

Well there’s a kind of irony about that, because, in fact, it’s used to condemn people who are often considered to be strangers from the majority of society.

- Rev. Gregory Dell

A very good point. But probably the best point, and one that I feel goes back to a point I made in my original post on Sodom and Gomorrah, is the point made by Dr. Amy Jill Levine.

It is about lack of hospitality, it is about violence. The true since in the Sodom and Gomorrah story, to me, is when Lot says ‘here are my two virgin daughters, why don’t you gang-rape them instead’.

That, I think, would be something we’d want to talk about. Thereby preventing abuse of children or parents marketing their children as sex slaves.

To elevate these texts and say the real concern is homosexuality is to show that our priorities are messed up.

 

 

 

Genesis chapter 2 “Ezer Kenegdo – A helper fit for”

(2 of 7 from the Biblical verses “condemning” homosexuality in the documentary Fish Out Of Water.)

Genesis chapter 2 is a fairly lengthy bit of text to be quoting, so I’ll give you a link to website where you can read it in it’s entirety (in several translation of the Bible) and give you a quick walk through of what happens in this chapter.

God creates Adam, the first human, but then decides that Adam is looking a little bit lonely in that big garden. So he decides to make a “helper suitable for him”. He makes all sorts of animals, birds, beasts and fish and Adam names each and every one of them, but none of them were suitable helpers for Adam.

So God, in what I can only assume was a fit of frustration, puts Adam into a deep sleep and yanks out a rib. From it he forms the first woman, who would be named Eve after the fall. (You notice that she doesn’t get her own name until she does something bad…).

Now here is where it gets interesting, because this verse is regularly used to prove that marriage should be between a man and a woman, but this verse proves no such thing. I want to first point out that it was only logical for the first pair of humans to be able to procreate naturally, because (as I said in my previous post) they were trying to populate a planet. Also, apparently Adam was straight…so necessarily a suitable helper would be female.

So that whole “It was Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve” argument is getting really played out guys. Why don’t you try something new.

The other thing I find interesting is the word used in the original Hebrew.

Rev. Frederick Neidner, Th.D.: The Phrase in Hebrew, the one that gets translated as “a helper fit for”, what it really says is

Dr. Amy Jill Levine: Ezer Kenegdo

Neidner: Ezer means ‘help’ and Kenegdo means ‘like unto it’, ‘corresponding to it’.

Levine: A helper like him. A helper as his mirror image.

Neidner: What it really says is there is a corresponding strength.

Levine: Somebody who mirrors back to the earthling his own humanity. Someone with whom that earthling can feel complete, can feel whole.

Neidner: It doesn’t mean servant or slave.

Levine: Helper does not mean someone who is subordinate.

Neidner: It’s most often a way to describe God.

Levine: God is our help.

Neidner: Like in the Psalms “My help comes from the Lord.” Well the word for help there is ‘Ezer’.

.

It seems to me that if God says it is not good for the human being to be alone, I will make that human being a helper – and it’s the human being who chooses who that helper is to be – then why, today, would we forbid gay and lesbian individuals from finding their own helper, from finding someone who completes them?

- Dr. Amy Jill Levine

.

Now we have to have marriage. Why marriage? Because it will cover their guilt. Now they can justify their sin, now they even would implicate god in their sin.

- Reverend David Ickes

Not unsurprisingly, Ickes has yet to grasp the concept that not everything in this world revolves around his religion or his shockingly narrow minded interpretation of Jesus life and teachings.

First of all, I feel no guilt. For what, exactly, am I supposed to feel guilt about? I don’t believe in your God, and even if I did, it’s quite obvious that many people in Christianity do not  believe that being gay is a sin. Why should any of the people fighting for same sex marriage feel guilty or feel that they are committing a sin?

Second. Why marriage? Well it’s, once again, not all because of your religion. I’ve had this argument a dozen times. The Christian religion does not hold some sort of patent on marriage (or on most of the ideas that make up Christianity for that matter). My wish to be able to get married has nothing do with guilt or sin or a wish to please some religious institution who thinks I shouldn’t have sex before marriage (that ship has sailed folks…) and everything to do with legal rights and protections that are given to married couples in the United States and abroad. If I produced that legal marriage certificate if my wife (should I ever have one) was in the hospital, I would be able to get access to her and the ability to make medical decisions for her, plus dozens of other benefits.

Marriage is important for us, but they make this relationship all about sex and when you’ve been in a relationship for a while, I mean, it’s not like your having sex twice a day. It’s about our home that we have together, it’s about the family we’re building together. It’s about the fact that when one of us gets upset we’re there to support each other.

Karen Rothstein-Pineda (with wife, Aurora Pineda)

That’s one other important thing to point out.

Sex is not always the key, binding point of a marriage (in fact, I would hope it isn’t).

I would like to believe that 10 years into a relationship my partner and I would still be having sex twice a day (and who knows, we might manage it. Depends on the woman I guess.) but that isn’t what marriage is about. Marriage is about finding that one person that completes you, who’s strengths correspond to your own, who you feel love and attraction to, your Ezer Kenegdo.

Eve was Adam’s, but that doesn’t mean that in a parallel universe that Steve was Adam’s Ezer Kenegdo. The fact that one story, a story mostly about populating a planet (see all the discussion of creation and the naming of animals and such), happened to be about a man and a women does not mean that God (if he exists) would condemn a man who finds his helper in another man, or a woman who finds her helper in another woman.

If God did create this planet, then we know that clearly loved variety. Why wouldn’t he want variety in the way human’s love as well?

And as a final note.

Why is what I do in the bedroom always the first thing people think about when I talk about gay marriage? When a heterosexual couple say they are getting married I don’t think about their sex life. I think about how the unlucky idiots are probably going to feel the need to buy a house and get a mortgage and and a mini-van and start having kids immediately. What they do in their bedroom is not even remotely my business, so why does the fact that I have sex with women make what I do in my bedroom your business?

Genesis 1:1-31 “Go forth and multiply”

(The first of seven posts on the verses I outlined as the main 7 verses used to condemn homosexuality by fundamentalist Christians. The original list of verses (and most the arguments I will be outlining in these posts) was taken from the documentary Fish Out Of Water by Ky Dickens.)

²⁸ God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

- Genesis 1:28 (the rest of the chapter)

Most common misinterpretation: Homosexuals cannot procreate and are therefore, inherently sinful.

The very first commandment in the Bible is be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and consequently a number of Bible readers would say that any form of sexual activity has to lead toward procreation.

- Dr. Amy Jill Levine

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If that standard is applied widely their are a whole lot of folks that are in trouble. That means any post-menopausal woman, any man or woman who is sterile, pregnant women – she’s not going to get pregnant again, anyone who chooses to use birth control.

- Reverend Greg Dell and Dr. Amy Jill Levine

Now here, in this case, I can at least see an argument. At least in any of those situations, the potential for procreation is there. Even in a sterile couples there have been documented cases of the occurrences of pregnancy.

So when Reverend David Ickes says “A man with a woman is a fruitful relationship, a man with a man is not.” I suppose, if what he means is that there is a potential for procreation there, I understand.

However, then the issue becomes what the phrase “fruitful relationship” means.

I mean, clearly Reverend Ickes believes it is the basis for a marriage and that it is something that a man and a woman can have and that 2 men and 2 women cannot have.

The dictionary says that the word Fruitful means “Productive; Successful”.

So really, what the basis for marriage is…is a productive and successful relationship?

…go figure…never would have guessed that in a million years. *rolls eyes*

Surprisingly my dictionary mentions nothing about procreation, though I suppose you could try to imply that the second definition (the one that applies to growing fruit) applies to human relationships as well…but I wouldn’t bet on that holding up in court.

And as far as the multiply part of that command. I think Dr. Levine and Reverend Dell have covered that pretty well.

Over population is more of a threat than under population as far as I can tell. … We really need to let go of that procreation argument as being pretty irrelevant for the world in which we live.

- Reverend Greg Dell

Oh, bugger, there’s that pesky “read the Bible in the context in which it was written” idea that academic Christianity loves and popular Christianity hates so much.

Let’s be fruitful and multiply in another way. Let’s multiply the amount of healthcare, let’s multiply the amount of aid.

Dr. Amy Jill Levine

Clearly that part of the command was written in the context of needing to populate (or re-populate) an area. We have no such problem today and could, in fact, stand to cut down on the populating just a little bit.

And if the whole procreating thing is really such and issue, may I remind you neither gay men nor lesbians have any more chance of being sterile than anyone else and both groups can (and do) procreate on a fairly regular basis through surrogates and sperm donations, options which are viewed as valid ways to have children for thousands of heterosexuals couples who face sterility in one, or both, partners. Why should that form of procreation be viewed as less valid, simply because a same sex couple is the one making use of it?

Until I see Reverend David Ickes, or any other pastor who preaches against gay marriage, denying marriage to the aged, the sterile and those on birth control, the argument posited by this verse is a moot point.

NEXT!

Fish Out Of Water (2009) Ky Dickens – A Summary/Review

While I don’t think it’s my job to dictate other people’s moral principle’s or the moral principles of their religion I do think that any person who is going to spout off about what their religion says about any particular social or moral practice needs to be well informed and hear about the issue from scholars on all sides of the topic, not just their side, before making any conclusions on what and who their god hates.

I can’t recall who said it, but I recall the quote “If God hates all the same people you do, you can be pretty sure you’ve created God in your own image.” and if you can’t stop hating those people, even after you’ve been shown that you’ve been misinterpreting your Bible for years…then God’s opinion was never a very important part of the equation was it?

When I sat down to watch Fish Out Of Water, after it was recommended on Canyonwalker Connections (one of the few pro-gay Christian blogs that I follow, despite not being a Christian myself), I wasn’t really sure what I was expecting. More of the same I suppose. You see, I’ve been arguing with the conservative Christian community about their views on homosexuality and gay rights since before I knew I was gay.

After a while, all the arguments about the “big 7″ – the  Biblical verses that (supposedly) condemn homosexuality – get kind of stale and old. It’s not like either side has any new material to pull from.

However, I found myself enjoying the information in the documentary more than I expected to partially because it gave me some new perspectives on old arguments and partially because it reminded me of something that I had nearly stopped believing, but I’ll go over that later. For now, we’ll start with the beginning of the documentary and work from there.

The documentary was made by Ky Dickens, a graduate of Vanderbilt University in the great state of Tennessee. Why a lesbian chose to go to a conservative school in a conservative state? Because lesbian films are as guilty of lying to young lesbians as Disney is of lying to children about love.

She came out to her sorority sisters during her senior year of college.
It did not go well.
Everything from being told she was possessed by demons to being told she was going to hell.

Ky didn’t know how to respond to the verses that were being thrown at her.

But she, like myself, had real gumption and spent 3 weeks traveling to churches throughout Nashville. Asking pastors was the Bible said about homosexuality. She said that “One after another told me that the Bible had been grossly misinterpreted on this issue.”  She said that she learned more about theology in those 3 weeks than she had in 12 years of Sunday school, which is, sadly, a common problem in churches. Controversial topics rarely make it into the topics of church discussion, at least not in honest discussion.

The information she gained she put into a letter to her former best friend, the person who now was her biggest opponent. That letter helped them begin to rebuild their friendship and she realized she needed to send this letter to everyone, everywhere.

That’s where the documentary comes in.

The documentary speaks about the political climate of the 2004 and 2008 elections briefly before mentioning the discussions she had with over 170 members of the LGBTQ community (many of which are interspersed through the documentary in short clips) many of whom seemed to know that they were ill-equipped to deal with the religious arguments that are thrown at them by religious fundamentalists. She also shows clips from her travels across the USA, getting people’s opinions on whether or not the Bible says anything about homosexuality. The answers were everything from “It doesn’t say anything”, “It’s in…Leviathan, I think?”, “Everybody knows the story of Sodom and Gomorrah” (My response there is is, no, clearly, you DON’T know that story.) and “Yeah, it says some stuff against it, but I think it’s wrong.”

Then things get really interesting. The interviews with 11 pastors and Biblical scholars (only 2 of which condemn homosexuality, one of whom is Fred Phelps *rolls eyes*). I will mention that all of the pastors and scholars interviewed were heterosexual and here is a list.

Rev. Gregory Dell
Dr. Amy Jill Levine
Rev. Dr. Fred Niedner
Rev. Dr. Jim Bankston
Rev. Dr. Gerald DeSobe
Bishop Dr. John Shelby Spong
Rev. Marylin Meekers-Williams
Rev. Dr. Linda Thomas
Rev. Dr. John Fellers

The first 9, jump right in to refuting the “Big 7″ verses that fundamentalist Christians use to condemn homosexuality. While Fred Phelps and David Ickes just sort of flail around and looks silly. Some might say this was unfair and that Dickens should have had more rational and capable people come defend their side, but I say that it’s not her fault that there are no rational people on that side of the argument.

As for the verses themselves?

Well here is a list of those.

Genesis 1:1-31
Genesis chapters 2-3
Genesis 19:1-29
Leviticus 18:22 & 20:13
Romans 1:26-27
1 Corinthians 6:9
Timothy 1:9-10

Look for a series of posts on the arguments against of each of these verses in the next few weeks. Some of the arguments used were actually new to me and I would like to do more research on them before addressing them individually.

The next section of the documentary reminds us that Biblical verses are not the only problem in our way. We’ve all heard someone link homosexuality to pedophilia, bestiality and incest. My own mother has casually compared homosexuality to pedophilia in conversations that we’ve had since I came out to her! Which shows exactly how much she cares about my emotions…or, y’know, the facts.

Ky asked both ministers and psychologists to weigh in on the topic and, unsurprisingly, none of them hold with the view that gay marriage will lead us down a slippery slope into a morbid world of debauchery and child abuse. That’s just not realistic and it doesn’t hold up under the scrutiny of actual statistical facts about pedophilia.

In one of her final points, Ky discusses that no matter what Biblical point you want to argue, Jesus is always the focal point of Christianity. It’s right there in the name after all. And Jesus…well he never said anything about homosexuality, nor could you infer anything about it from his original teachings that would condemn them.

If you went up to Jesus and said ‘What do you think about homosexuality?’ Jesus’ response would have been ‘What do you think about love of God, love of neighbor and care for the poor? You’re asking the wrong question, because you’re focused on the wrong issue.’

- Dr. Amy Jill Levine

The real problem (and the place where communication tends to break down and debates tend to begin) is that there is a deep difference between academic and popular Christianity. Academic Christianity remembers that revealing the text of the Bible is complicated and a long process, you don’t just open the Bible and understand what it says…which is the way that popular Christianity wants to believe it is.

Reverand Marylin Meeker-Williams said it best in the documentary when she said the only part of the process that is not complicated is that God is love.

7 verses in the Bible ‘condemn’ homosexuality.
1% of the Biblical verses say anything about same-gender relationships.
Love is mentioned over 600 times in the Bible.
Which one of those things do you think your God was trying to tell you was most important?

In closing.

The one thing that watching this documentary really helped me reclaim was a sense of hope. I am not a Christian, but I’ve spent a lot of time trying to regain a tenuous grasp on some hope that the Christian church (as an organization) could learn to accept homosexuality. It is sometimes hard to remember that there are actually are more rational and sane people at the top than we realize. When you are at the bottom of the heap, staring up through a pile of bloggers who wouldn’t know what the terms ‘historical context’ or ‘Biblical interpretation’ or ‘translation errors’ meant if they grew teeth and bit them on the ass. I’m surrounded by youtube videos of Fred Phelps screaming about Sodomites.

And then I turn on a documentary like this and I remember that sanity remains and intelligence is still alive somewhere.

And  THAT  is why you should watch this documentary, whether you’re like me…losing hope in the intelligence of mankind and losing hope that Christianity will ever evolve. Or maybe you just want any extra edge in those debates with pesky fundamentalist Christians…I know I can be accused of that myself. Or maybe you are those very bloggers I just mentioned. Trust me, the documentary is worth it. It’s on ITunes, go buy it and widen your mental horizons.