Opponents of gay marriage often cite Scripture. But what the Bible teaches about love argues for the other side.Let's try for a minute to take the religious conservatives at their word and define marriage as the Bible does. Shall we look to Abraham, the great patriarch, who slept with his servant when he discovered his beloved wife Sarah was infertile? Or to Jacob, who fathered children with four different women (two sisters and their servants)? Abraham, Jacob, David, Solomon and the kings of Judah and Israel—all these fathers and heroes were polygamists. The New Testament model of marriage is hardly better. Jesus himself was single and preached an indifference to earthly attachments—especially family. The apostle Paul (also single) regarded marriage as an act of last resort for those unable to contain their animal lust. "It is better to marry than to burn with passion," says the apostle, in one of the most lukewarm endorsements of a treasured institution ever uttered. Would any contemporary heterosexual married couple—who likely woke up on their wedding day harboring some optimistic and newfangled ideas about gender equality and romantic love—turn to the Bible as a how-to script?
Of course not, yet the religious opponents of gay marriage would have it be so. (Read More)
You will want to check other articles in this week's issue and in past issues:
- A Gay Marriage Surge: Public Support Grows According to the New Newsweek Poll
- And Anna Quindlen's editorial: The Same People
- Miller v. Jenkins: One Gay Couple's Custody Battle
- Photo Gallery: A Changing Tide
- Why I Got Married Before California's Prop 8 Vote
- Long Invisible: Gay Seniors Seek Respect, Services
- How My Same-Sex Wedding Made Me an Activist
Also see these videos as well: Is Gay the New Black? and From Stonewall to Prop 8.
Thank you, Newsweek!!
The Newsweek article pretty much sums it up.
ReplyDelete(but there will now be Fundamentalist pulpits condemning people for reading Newsweek - and bitter letters to the editor telling why they are now canceling their subscriptions)
It's pretty hilarious to hear the rationalizations people try to use when they talk about "Biblical Marriage" and they're confronted with all the examples of marriage in the Bible that are anything but the typical 1950's nuclear family.
ReplyDeleteThe Mosaic Law did prescribed the death penalty for homosexuality, but it also did for murder, rape, kidnapping, witchcraft, idolatry, treason, sedition, contempt of court, temple desecration, cursing one's parents, pre-marital sex, adultery, incest, and bestiality—this last sin apparently a nagging problem in the shepherding culture of the Chosen People, not only for the people, but for the sheep and goats as well.
ReplyDeleteMentions of sodomy—sexual perversions in general—crop up several times in the Old Testament, but homosexuality as such only twice. In the New Testament, Paul denounces both male and female homosexuality, but Jesus Christ, the ultimate authority on sinfulness, doesn't mention homosexuality at all. Clearly, God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah because folks there were violent and wicked, not because they were queer.