This morning’s Chronicle has an article about religious supporters of Prop. 8, and it included a chart of Bible verses that relate to homosexuality. Matthai Kuruvila, the Chron’s religion writer, tried desperately to be “objective” about what both sides say on the issue. She quotes Leviticus 20:13, for example:
“If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.”
According to the religious right, she says, “The injunction against homosexuality is timeless law, though Jesus changed penalties for sin.” (And thank God for that — it seems as if Jesus had some good reasons to oppose the death penalty.) The other side says “Times have changed, and the verses applied to those times only.”
Ya know … I grew up in the Catholic Church, and I realize my school was run by the Carmelites and my parents’ friends were Jesuits and it was, after all, the Sixies … but nobody, not even the priests, took the Bible at its literal word. When I asked one of the nuns during science class how God could have created the world in seven days and she said “don’t worry about that, honey, God’s time is a little different from our time.”
So in that spirit, I thought I would quote a few of my favorite Bible verses that demonstrate how utterly silly it is to believe that this particular collection of writings has any relevance to the discussion of same-sex marriage.
There’s loads more at Thebricktestament, one of my favorite Biblical sites.