God 'n' Gays

[poliphilo]

The Biblical texts that are supposed to condemn homosexuality would- if I were to print them here- fill about half a screen. They come from the Old Testament Book of Leviticus (which also condemns the eating of shellfish) and a couple of the Pauline Epistles. There is nothing- but nothing- about homosexuality in the Gospels. If God really hates fags don't you think he'd have banged on about it at least as much as Jerry Falwell used to do?

Comments

[cataptromancer.livejournal.com]

I bet if one were to look it up, there's probably at least twice as much in the bible about how to treat your slaves as there are condemnations of homosexuality. And, despite the intersection of some US fundamentalism with racism, I just don't hear a lot about returning to institutionalized slavery from right-wing christians these days...

Not to mention that the terms for homosexuality in the bible are vague and very historically contingent and scholars debate about whether certain ones mean homosexual in any way close to the way we use it...

I just don't get what kind of a problem fundamentalist christians have with gay people. I mean, I understand it intellectually (they're afraid of things that destabilize their own strictly binarized and hierarchized ideas of gender and how it fits into society), but I just can't put myself in that mental position at all. How in the hell would the very existence of someone else's noncoercive sexual practice be able to bug me? (Although I guess that's why fundie articles and sermons so often depict homosexuality as coercive -- child molesters, people out to prey and convert -- because it is easy to see a rapist as a threat even if said rapist lives nowhere near your house...)

(sorry, a morning rambling)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

The Bible doesn't have all that much to say about any kind of sex. It's much more concerned with issues of oppression and justice.