Sunday, January 1, 2023

"you keep saying that" - Hate Mail

IT WOULD BE ridiculous to be going over Sodom and Gomorrah and Judges 19 repeatedly except that S&G is being brought up repeatedly to attack marriage equality.  I get the feeling they weren't aware of Judges 19 till I mentioned it.  The funny thing is that as soon as I bring up what Jesus had to say about remarriage after divorce being adultery, they don't want to take that passage to mean what it says.  It's always different when you're in the majority and can get theologians to revise those kinds of issues away.  Even the Catholic hierarchy does it without admitting it does it. 

Maybe I should do a series going through every one of the Scriptural passages used to condemn LGBTQ equality and note what else the books that contain them condemn because over and over again those things were changed to suit the straight, or wealthy or powerful as they insisted that the anti-LGBTQ passages were set in stone forever.  Of course that's been done before but it might be handy to have the list available to throw at the hypocrites.

It might help if I formally state as the only hermenutical position I am going to tolerate is one that takes the Golden Rule and the "by their fruits you will know them," methods of evaluation of the meaning of passages as the supreme means of judging Scripture from now on.  I take those as being absolute and eternal truths and they were as true during the period of Genesis as they are today and forever.  And I've got no reason, at all, to pretend I can't see when things in Scripture violate those absolute reference points because it's obvious that enormous parts of Scripture does.  No one in the entire period after the Scriptures were put into a fixed form and became canonical has not ignored parts of it on that basis of internal contradiction.  I have no reason to pretend it is all true.

Neither am I going to give up the good because it's considered impolite or scandalous to read Scripture as if it really is important enough to read critically and skeptically.   

For now, this is as far as I want to go with this because I'm hoping to get back to regular posting this month. 

What is really funny is that I'm in favor of all marriages being equal to the best of marriages, faithful, mutually supportive, enduring and based in love.  AND ANY CHILDREN BORN OF THEM TO BE FULLY AND RESPONSIBLY SUPPORTED AND RAISED.  I want Lesbian and gay marriages to be the best kind, something which straight people don't seem to much aspire to, these days.  I get flack for being old fashioned on that count.  Though there's nothing old fashioned about that, it never gets old.

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