Good As You

That poster that says, "Jesus said, go and sin no more," is from the book of John. But the story that the words come from WASN'T written by John. Best evidence suggests that the story WAS ADDED BY A SCRIBE many years after John's death, as the story isn't in any of the earlier surviving copies of the document. The book of John is also the only place where that story is ever told.

And that flawed bible is what today's Christian church "staunchly" (when it conveniently says what they want it to say) adheres to. Those "unadulterated" and "unequivocal" words of god.

"FAGS CAN'T MARRY Matt. 19:5"
--
And straights can't REmarry, Matthew 19:9:

"I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, and marries another woman commits adultery."

Hypocritical cowards.

To quote Reverend Laurence Keene: “There’s nothing wrong with a fifth grade understanding of God, as long as you’re in the fifth grade.”

Believers in Jesus can read his commandment to love God with our minds as much as with the rest of us. And yet they refuse to think, despite the fact that Jesus himself warns that many will say they are with God but are not. Given that he was all about love, who do you suppose are the ones not really with God? Maybe the ones who spread hatred and divisiveness?

The bible itself changes what it tells readers to do as the times and circumstances of those readers change. Things that were sacred laws once upon a time are now “abominations.” We no longer believe that all the raw material for creating a new human life is in male ejaculate. We now recognize women as – oh, I don’t know, people? And it's no longer okay for someone (Lot, in Genesis) to offer his virgin daughters to a violent, rapacious crowd.

We need to understand scripture, not just parrot it. We need to recognize the “thou shalts” and the “thou shalt nots” for what they are: TACTICS. And tactics are not absolute. That’s why they change through time within the bible itself. If it is still true that we should not murder, that’s not because “not murdering” is absolute; it’s because loving each other too much to do that is absolute.

We should approach this stuff like – what was that phrase? Oh, yes: As a little child. Not blindly, not stupidly, but with a love of learning, a demand to understand, an open heart and an open mind that continually asks “Why?”

And as for defining marriage as “one man/one woman” – WHY? If that’s the way it was in biblical times, WHY? Maybe because homosexuality as we know it today didn’t exist then? Maybe because everyone married as early as possible so they could start having kids immediately so that they would have someone to take care of them when they became infirm? (No banks, no tax-sheltered annuities, no graduated care facilities…) Maybe because these marriages took place while people were in their teens? Maybe no one had time to wonder why their “marriage” wasn’t fulfilling because they were living hand to mouth? Maybe all of the above?

If you want to follow the bible as a plan for life, great; but recognize that it is a plan. It should be used strategically. And if the tactics you’re applying no longer support the objective of LOVE, they probably need to be jettisoned. And as the intro to this thread points out, we don’t really know which writings that have come to us as the bible were written when or by whom. This is just one more reason why the objective must trump the tactics. LOVE. It’s that simple. And, evidently, that difficult.

Enjoy it while it lasts, because in November it's all over. The Court's reasoning IS flawed. The Appellate Court and the dissent got it right - what you really wanted was a constitutional right to gay marriage, not just the right to marry. You can't. Actually you can. You just have to marry someone of the opposite sex. You muscled your way in to something you necessarily can't have, and bastardized marriage for the rest of us. The rest of us will undo the mess in November. Oh, by the way, I don't "hate" you and I'm not "phobic."

Michael: Continuing to repeat those lines won't make them any more true. And even if your side does win in November, it won't make your stances any more righteous.

Marriage equality = inevitable.

Excuse the length, but I think your readers might like to see this:

An Open Letter to Ron Prentice, Prop. 8 Chair

To: Ron Prentice, Chair, ProtectMarriage.com (Prop. 8 campaign)
From: David Benkof, formerly of GaysDefendMarriage.com

Proposition 8 isn’t the only California initiative I have vocally supported. I worked hard to rally gay and Jewish voters behind 1996’s Prop. 187, which banned racial preferences. At first, I was wary because I was afraid other supporters would be racist. But I was pleased to find myself working alongside a multiracial coalition of people who think, like I do, that race has no place in government decision-making.

With Proposition 8, I was hoping to have a similar experience. And there certainly are many Prop. 8 supporters who believe in man-woman marriage, but not discrimination. But I encountered too much homophobia to make me comfortable, and when I found Prop. 8 was even tolerant of antisemitism, I had had enough and reversed my support of the initiative.

I’ve written 10 questions below, which aim to help me understand exactly what your thoughts are about non-Christians (or Christians you don’t think are Christians) and about gays and lesbians. Your honest response would be welcome:

1. Proposition 8 chose a Legal Counsel, the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), that has an antisemitic and anti-Mormon hiring policy (the dictionary defines antisemitic as discrimination against Jews, and ADF won’t let Jews apply for jobs, even as secretaries). If ADF were unavailable and a similarly experienced law firm offered to serve as Legal Counsel for Prop. 8, without a fee, but it refused to hire blacks, would you be willing to select them? If not, why is employment discrimination against Jews and Mormons less wrong than discrimination against African-Americans?

2. Prop. 8’s Web site once referred to gay and lesbian “families” (your quotes). Do you consider two lesbians and their baby to be a family? If not, what are they?

3. Should a gay man be legally allowed to designate his same-sex partner to visit him in the hospital and make medical decisions, or should his biological family be allowed to refuse to let his partner even see him?

4. The Web site of the organization you run, the California Family Council, quotes approvingly of someone who says “the Church has received power to rule the world.” Assuming you don’t consider Mormons to be Christian, how will Mormons be treated when the Church rules Utah? When the Church rules Israel, what religious, political, and civil rights do you predict Jews will have? If they have full political rights, won’t they then evict the minority Christians from power, and thus the Church will not rule the world?

5. If half the Jews in the United States moved to Israel, and the other half converted to Christianity, do you think that would be a good thing, a bad thing, or neutral?

6. Do you think homosexuality is a choice? If so, what do you mean by “choice”?

7. Do you think gay men should marry women? If so, would you let your daughter marry one?

8. Right now there are more than 10 Jews in the United States Senate. If they were all defeated by Christians in the next election, would that be good, bad, or indifferent for America?

9. Do you consider America to be a “Christian nation”? If you mean sociologically, then isn’t America also a “white nation”? If you mean something else, what is it?

10. You claim Prop. 8 is not anti-gay. Yet ProtectMarriage.com links to a blog that links Prop. 8 to irrelevant non-marriage gay issues like the disproportionately high rate of HIV in gay men and teaching gay history in schools. Will you denounce activists who use anti-gay prejudice to rally support for the initiative, and remove links to their sites from ProtectMarriage.com?

Leslie McFall has an interesting way to deal with the so-called exception clause in Matthew 19:9 that appears to allow for divorce and remarriage for marriage unfaithfulness.
He has written a 43 page paper that reviews the changes in the Greek made by Erasmus that effect the way Matthew 19:9 has been translated. I reviewed McFall's paper at morechristlike.com/except-for- fornication-clause-of-matthew-19-9/ Except For Fornication Clause of Matthew 19:9. I would love to hear some feedback on this position.