While on Piers Morgan's show on CNN (yeah, as usual, I'm late to the party), Kirk Cameron said that homosexuality is against what God created as perfect in the Bible with Adam and Eve, in Genesis.
Unfortunately for Kirk, he seems to be parroting right wing talking points without having actually read the Bible from cover to cover, which I have done myself, at least twenty times. This should actually surprise many people who have heard Kirk's conversion story, where he says that, from that day forward, the Scriptures came alive to him. It would seem that only a few select Scriptures came alive. The rest he conveniently ignored.
You see, Adam and Eve were not married. According to the book of Genesis, they were a man and a woman, but they weren't married. There was no marriage. No marriage license was issued to them. God did not perform a marriage ceremony in a church with a hallowed vow that the Eve would forever obey Adam and Adam would throw his dirty socks on the table and Even would have to smile sweetly, kneel down, and rub his feet. There wasn't even a law that gave Adam and Eve the right to get married. Also, because there wasn't a law that Adam and Eve could be married, there was also no implied principle that Adam couldn't marry another man.
Wait...there wasn't another man he could marry anyway? Oh...riiiight. Which brings me to the reason why Kirk Cameron has obviously not read the Bible thoroughly.
In the beginning, there was Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve had kids the old fashioned way. No artificial means were necessary, no adoptions available. No, they simply "knew" each other. But their generations carried on, correct? Yep. Kirk, brothers and sisters got busy with each other in Genesis. They had kids and cousins had kids and uncles and nieces had kids. All kinds of relatives had relations with relatives near and far and they all had kids together. It was all one big, happy family there for a while.
Then God does weird things in his inerrant and completely inspired word (Kirk Cameron's assumption). He orders a prophet of his to buy a prostitute and take her for his wife. His own blessed people get pissed at a foreigner who slept with one of their women, so they circumcise all the foreigners of the land, then murder them - then they steal their wives and daughters for themselves. One of God's tribes were short on estrogen so they lay in wait, at God's command, for women to come out and dance, then they kidnapped them and took them for their own wives (You can watch this live in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers).
Many men of renown, godly men, men after God's own heart, had many wives. The stories around these women were beautiful (especially David's women) and not once was it condemned by God. He had many an opportunity to ridicule David for his polygamous practices but nary a word. None. In the case of Solomon, God only cared that he married foreign wives. Yes, God would be considered racist if he wasn't so perfect and holy that we don't get to pick on him for doing everything he tells us not to do.
Kirk, there are many more stories of all shapes and sizes about marriages in the Bible. Only, they were never called "marriages". Unfortunately for your rhetoric, the Bible never says that marriage should be between a man and a woman. Right wing leaders would want you to think that the Bible says that. But it doesn't.
Rather than looking at all the cool ways one can get married if they follow the literal Bible, why not adopt the REAL talking points between those covers. Like the fact that homosexuals need to die, right along with rebellious children. The fact that destruction of civilization pointed to the sexual deviancy of the people in those societies that were destroyed. Those are the real principles on homosexuality in the Bible.
Don't look to the Bible to define other's lives, Kirk. It gets messy in a hurry. That's simply because you're relying on sheepherders and camel riders who thoughts that a whisper of wind was the breath of the gods. Let's progress together and accept the reality that people are people and they deserve the same love and respect as those you claim should be the picture of a great society. In the arena of ideas, your arguments have no basis and you will lose. It's inevitable.
Love,
I. C.
Unfortunately for Kirk, he seems to be parroting right wing talking points without having actually read the Bible from cover to cover, which I have done myself, at least twenty times. This should actually surprise many people who have heard Kirk's conversion story, where he says that, from that day forward, the Scriptures came alive to him. It would seem that only a few select Scriptures came alive. The rest he conveniently ignored.
You see, Adam and Eve were not married. According to the book of Genesis, they were a man and a woman, but they weren't married. There was no marriage. No marriage license was issued to them. God did not perform a marriage ceremony in a church with a hallowed vow that the Eve would forever obey Adam and Adam would throw his dirty socks on the table and Even would have to smile sweetly, kneel down, and rub his feet. There wasn't even a law that gave Adam and Eve the right to get married. Also, because there wasn't a law that Adam and Eve could be married, there was also no implied principle that Adam couldn't marry another man.
Wait...there wasn't another man he could marry anyway? Oh...riiiight. Which brings me to the reason why Kirk Cameron has obviously not read the Bible thoroughly.
In the beginning, there was Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve had kids the old fashioned way. No artificial means were necessary, no adoptions available. No, they simply "knew" each other. But their generations carried on, correct? Yep. Kirk, brothers and sisters got busy with each other in Genesis. They had kids and cousins had kids and uncles and nieces had kids. All kinds of relatives had relations with relatives near and far and they all had kids together. It was all one big, happy family there for a while.
Then God does weird things in his inerrant and completely inspired word (Kirk Cameron's assumption). He orders a prophet of his to buy a prostitute and take her for his wife. His own blessed people get pissed at a foreigner who slept with one of their women, so they circumcise all the foreigners of the land, then murder them - then they steal their wives and daughters for themselves. One of God's tribes were short on estrogen so they lay in wait, at God's command, for women to come out and dance, then they kidnapped them and took them for their own wives (You can watch this live in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers).
Many men of renown, godly men, men after God's own heart, had many wives. The stories around these women were beautiful (especially David's women) and not once was it condemned by God. He had many an opportunity to ridicule David for his polygamous practices but nary a word. None. In the case of Solomon, God only cared that he married foreign wives. Yes, God would be considered racist if he wasn't so perfect and holy that we don't get to pick on him for doing everything he tells us not to do.
Kirk, there are many more stories of all shapes and sizes about marriages in the Bible. Only, they were never called "marriages". Unfortunately for your rhetoric, the Bible never says that marriage should be between a man and a woman. Right wing leaders would want you to think that the Bible says that. But it doesn't.
Rather than looking at all the cool ways one can get married if they follow the literal Bible, why not adopt the REAL talking points between those covers. Like the fact that homosexuals need to die, right along with rebellious children. The fact that destruction of civilization pointed to the sexual deviancy of the people in those societies that were destroyed. Those are the real principles on homosexuality in the Bible.
Don't look to the Bible to define other's lives, Kirk. It gets messy in a hurry. That's simply because you're relying on sheepherders and camel riders who thoughts that a whisper of wind was the breath of the gods. Let's progress together and accept the reality that people are people and they deserve the same love and respect as those you claim should be the picture of a great society. In the arena of ideas, your arguments have no basis and you will lose. It's inevitable.
Love,
I. C.
Some on now, you are entirely missing the point, and whiffing at straw man after straw man.
ReplyDeleteThe bible is filled with many stories about men and women marrying, prostituting themselves, and raping each other, but none of that has anything to do with the claim that the preponderance of biblical evidence indicates marriage is between a man and a woman (or women).
This statement is just nonsense:
"Kirk, there are many more stories of all shapes and sizes about marriages in the Bible. Only, they were never called "marriages". Unfortunately for your rhetoric, the Bible never says that marriage should be between a man and a woman. Right wing leaders would want you to think that the Bible says that. But it doesn't."
What are all of those stories about, if not marriage?
So you are in favor of rape, and please explain to me ONE Bible story about a woman raping a man? Joseph was hit on, but not raped. Unfortunately for women, the OT treats rape as a negotiable issue: a sort of you break it, you buy it way of treating precious female human beings. The OT as well as the epistles attributed to Paul are full of misogyny, a horrible trait thankfully absent from the life of Jesus.
DeleteYou keep your Bible doctrines; I'll follow Jesus. He did not uphold the Law, broke it repeatedly in action and teaching, and especially defied the tradition that objectified and denigrated women. Jesus is not recorded as saying a single word in condemnation of homosexuality, despite being born into the Roman empire.
Christianity as practiced by the institutional church is a fraud. You have no moral basis for telling the rest of the world how to live.
Again, nobody got married in the Bible. The political rhetoric is meaningless in light of Scripture. Meaningless.
ReplyDeleteRegardless of that finer point, just the fact that there were so many different kinds of relationships in the Bible that weren't condemned and also weren't between one man and one woman, anyone who argues that it has to be between a man and a woman is selling something. It's dishonest.
ReplyDeleteI.C.:
ReplyDeleteIn your post you write:
"You see, Adam and Eve were not married. According to the book of Genesis, they were a man and a woman, but they weren't married. There was no marriage."
Genesis 2:22-24 supplies both the description of the first marriage and the definition of marriage when it says:
"And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said,
"'This at last is bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
"'she shall be called Woman,
because she was taken out of Man.'
"Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh."
Just because the word "marriage" was not used does not mean that no marriage took place. In a discussion of divorce (which, of course, is the dissolution of a marriage), Jesus cited this very passage and commented, "What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate" (Matthew 19:6 and Mark 10:9). So Jesus (or at the very least the authors of two of the gospels) understood this passage in Genesis 2 as describing the first marriage.
"Becoming one flesh" is just the biblical way of saying "having sexual intercourse". As for Jesus' quote about marriage, didn't he also curse a tree because it didn't produce fruit? He was a nutcase, wasn't he?
DeleteI.C:
ReplyDeleteYou also wrote:
"Kirk, there are many more stories of all shapes and sizes about marriages in the Bible. Only, they were never called 'marriages'."
When confronted about this statement you replied:
"Again, nobody got married in the Bible."
Well...uh...actually...the primary Hebrew word for marriage (just to begin with the noun here) in the Bible (Old Testament) is "ishshah." You'll find it translated "marriage" in such verses as Genesis 34:8, 12, and 21, Judges 21:1 and 7, 1 Kings 11:19, 2 Kings 14:9, 1 Chronicles 2:35, and 2 Chronicles 25:18. Another Hebrew word translated "marriage" is "chathan," which is found in such places as 1 Kings 3:1 and 2 Chronicles 18:1.
A primary Greek word for marriage in the New Testament is "gamidzo," from which we get our word "monogamy." It's translated "given in marriage" in Matthew 22:30, 24:38, Mark 12:25, Luke 17:27, 20:35, and 2 Corinthians 7:38 (twice). The closely-related word "gamisko" is translated "marriage" in Luke 2:36, as is "gamos" in Hebrews 13:4, and Revelation 19:7 and 9.
And I have not even begun to examine the 40 verses in the Old and New Testaments that testify to the verb form of the word by recording people actually getting married (e.g., Genesis 26:34; Exodus 2:1; 1 Kings 7:8; Mark 6:17; 1 Corinthians 7:33, just to grab a few at random).
The text of the Bible is literally filled with direct references to people getting married and being in marriages. Anyone even remotely acquainted with the Bible knows that not only did people get married in the Bible, but lots and lots of people got married in the Bible, and that those marriages were patterned after the first marriage of Adam and Eve. It's simply elementary Bible knowledge.
In light of this incredibly obvious fact, I find it quite remarkable that you can write, "Kirk Cameron has obviously not read the Bible thoroughly." I believe that even people who agree with your position would be embarrassed for you if they've even read a relatively small portion of the Bible.
But then you write:
"Regardless of that finer point, just the fact that there were so many different kinds of relationships in the Bible that weren't condemned and also weren't between one man and one woman, anyone who argues that it has to be between a man and a woman is selling something. It's dishonest."
I'm not sure what you're referring to by "that finer point." The "finer point" that marriages did (or did not) exist in the Bible? Actually, that was your primary point, and it does not stand up under scrutiny.
In any case, to say that there were types of sexual relationships other than between a man and a woman that were not condemned in the Bible is just plain wrong. Leviticus 18:22 reads, "You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination," and Romans 1:26-27 provides an even more graphic condemnation of homosexual behavior. Other passages could also be cited.
Good. So you have one example of a few people commending a relationship between a man and a woman. That does not remove the fact that many other ways of "getting a woman" was condoned by the god of the Bible. Also, it doesn't mean that other types of "marriages" were condemned either.
ReplyDeleteFrankly, my argument was not specifically that the word "marriage" was not in the Bible. While that was a minor point, the real purpose of the post was to point out that standing on the Bible for a singular definition of marriage is very naive. Worse yet, to claim that it needs to be legislated according to your interpretations is even more ignorant.
And Ron!!!! Good to see you! I'm honored that you would stoop to the level of coming over to my corner of the internet. It was your work with Don Venoit that brought me complete peace about dumping Billy Boy G.
ReplyDeleteFor that, I eternally thank you.
<3
DeleteYes, those relationships were condemned and I said as much. But not marriage between the same sex. Keep in mind, you're arguing for legislation of what you consider your interpretation of the Bible. I find that to be exclusionary, discriminatory, and ignorant, being that the Bible was written by a bunch of nomads and camel riders from millenia ago. We have progressed far enough to realize that much of it was poppycock.
ReplyDeleteConsider the fact that God's knowledge of biology was severely crimped. In his inspired word, Jacob had goats stare at striped sticks and they had striped kids. Um...yeah, that's as believable as only eight people shoveled millions of animals' poop for a year while floating in a wooden ship in 100% humidity.
The Bible is wrong on many things and we would trust it to teach us how to hate people?
Ron, Adam and Eve did not get married. Read my post again. Nobody "got married" in the Bible. You cannot use the Bible to try and discriminate against people in our modern day invention of government sanctioned marriage. You CAN use the Bible to discriminate against people for how they live their personal lives. I just won't give you much credit for it though.
ReplyDeleteAgain, marriage was never mentioned in the Bible. Specific relationships were. Nowhere was same sex marriage condemned.
As I said before, God sanctioned stealing women when you were short on females. Why do we not legislate for that? Also, I could use a few more wives. The dishes in the sink here are getting pretty crusty.
ReplyDeleteAnother thing, the Koran has a lot to say about marriage as well. Why can't we legislate using that book? Why not use Shakespeare or Tolstoy or even Henzel?
ReplyDeleteMorality comes from common understanding of our contemporaneous understanding of what is acceptable in society. We have progressed beyond the rigid bigotry of the Bible, written by ancient peoples. You know...the book that says everyone that believes in the evil and murderous god of its pages will burn in fire for eternity. Yeah...that one.
Correction: Everyone that DOESN'T believe in the god of the Bible. Oops.
ReplyDeleteI.C.:
ReplyDeleteYou wrote:
"Again, marriage was never mentioned in the Bible."
You might as well be arguing that the sky is orange. I've already given you plenty of references to marriage in the Bible.
You are obviously not interested in facts, or even in a serious discussion.
Ron, I can repeat it if you would like me too, if that helps make my point. It's a fact. Marriage was never mentioned in the Bible. Relationships and having sex was mentioned.
ReplyDeletePeople around the world object to marriage between anything other than a man and a woman because they think that the Bible condones only marriage between a man and a woman. I have argued that that is not the case. You have tossed around a bunch of verses (which are in the Bible, yes) and have offered some Greek interpretations, which show that yes, there were relationships - but not government sanctioned marriage as we know it today - legal marriage.
There is nothing in the Bible that mandates we outlaw marriage between loving human beings. Nothing. To say otherwise is to try to push your interpretation and prooftexting on others.
Again, I also mentioned that other authors talk about marriage. Shouldn't we follow them? Why follow the Bible as rabidly as some think we need to? It's not like it's a special book, elevated to some status better than Homer's Iliad.
I.C.:
ReplyDeleteYou are arguing from ignorance. Governments do not sanction marriage, they regulate it. Marriage existed prior to governments. The laws of our country (or any other country for that matter) do not establish any right to marriage, or establish marriage as an institution. Neither do they claim to do so. They simply recognize it and seek to make it fair for all parties involved in it (including the children produced by it). Marriage was also regulated by the Law of Moses in the Bible.
Furthermore, no society, no government, no religious book, no people, anywhere or at any time, has ever recognized the union of same-sex couples as a "marriage."
Your argument is all smoke and mirrors—and only wisps of smoke and dime-store mirrors at that.
Ron. That's pretty ignorant. Canada does. I'm sure other countries do. If not, looks like we'll be the first. Someone needs to start progression rather than keep our heads in the past. Just because others have never done it, which is false, proves nothing.
ReplyDeleteIf that was the case, we'd still be using horses and buggies.
Sanction/regulation = word games. Ray Comfort style.
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same-sex_marriage
ReplyDeleteRon, that link should educate you a tad better on your statement, which I hope you'll retract and admit your ignorance on the issue.
You said, "Furthermore, no society, no government, no religious book, no people, anywhere or at any time, has ever recognized the union of same-sex couples as a "marriage.""
As you can see, that is patently false. Furthermore, even if it were true, it would have no bearing on what is right for society, morally. That is for us to decide. Years ago, slavery was perfectly fine. As most people know, the Bible condones slavery, even to the point of beating your slave to death. We thumbed our noses at God and outlawed it in this country. Unfortunately, most of Europe had already outlawed the practice. As usual, America was behind morally. Why was that? Because we stood on the Bible to stay behind. We are doing the same with gay marriage.
One day, we will look back on this "fight" as we do on the prominence of the man Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his fight to end discrimination against black people and we will teach our children about the evils of hating others for no other reason than they were different than us.
I can only assume that you have no gay friends. Why don't you get a few and they'll change your mind. You'll realize that the god you serve is a petty god and puts certain rules in place that make absolutely no common sense.
After all, I'm wearing a cotton/polyester shirt right now, against God's command. And, my daughter talked back to me a few hours ago and she's still alive.
Since the United States is a secular state it doesn't matter what the Bible says. The state has the obligation to act in the best interest of its citizens. As such, it regulates and controls who can marry and at what age.
ReplyDeleteWhen it comes to same sex marriage the only issues are justice and civil rights. In a maturing democracy as ours it is just to allow same sex marriage and from the civil rights persctive, homosexuals should have the same civil rights as everyone else.
The state must remain indifferent to matters of religion. For those who oppose same sex marriage they are free to be arrived by an officiant of their sect. Homosexuals marrying does not affect them in any way. What IS threatened is their bigoted view of homosexuals. What IS threatened is the influence their antiquated, offensive moral code has on our society.
Thanks, Bruce. You said it more elegantly in three paragraphs than I did in 20.
ReplyDeleteThanks! Sorry for the typos. Fat fingers, iPad=typos.
DeleteIt's downright humiliating how backwards this country is in matters of morality to the more "liberal" nations! The fact that gay marriage is still such a hot topic here is a fact that amuses countries like Canada and Sweden and Norway - we are SO behind the times! And incidently they are doing pretty great, with fare less crime and more economic, political, and socail stability than we have. Why aren't they being punished by an angry God?
ReplyDeleteRon, I find it incredibly arrogant to insist that your interpretation of the Bible is the correct one when I don't know even any two Christians whose views on the Bible vary to some degree and furthermore your opinion of the Bible is the one that should be followed by your fellow citizens...
There is not one person on the face of the planet who knows what the bible said when it was written. Not one. I find it hilarious that people claim to. There is no other book that has had more financial impact on the world and there are people who think it wasn't twisted to suit a particular purpose?!? Silly, silly souls. It's a great read. Full of lots of interesting stories. And it is a lot of things, but one thing it most definitely is NOT? Fact. IT IS NOT FACT. And your interpretation isn't either. Or yours, or yours, yours or yours.
ReplyDeleteAnd, is it really Christian to be so righteous as to think that your understanding of it is the right one and all others are wrong?? Ooohh, I smell hypocrisy.