Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
By now you've probably seen Rick Warren's belated statement speaking out against that barbaric anti-gay bill in Uganda. He's being praised for it, but I don't buy it. This is a complete flip flop. Here's what he said only a week and a half ago:
However, it is not my personal calling as a pastor in America to comment or interfere in the political process of other nations." On Meet the Press this morning, he reiterated this neutral stance in a different context: "As a pastor, my job is to encourage, to support. I never take sides."
And here he is now:
As an American pastor, it's not my role to interfere with the politics of other nations. But it is my role to speak out on moral issues. And it is my role to shepherd other pastors who look to me for guidance.
And then he speaks out against the Ugandan bill. Gee Rick, what changed in the last week? He doesn't even acknowledge that this is an obvious contradiction, much less attempt to explain it. If he's changed his mind, then he should own up to that and explain what changed his mind. He's had his chance to say what he's saying now several times over the last few weeks. He's been asked about it directly on several occasions.
Without even acknowledging that he's flipped positions completely, one can only assume that the real reason for doing so is because he's taking a lot of heat for it and is in damage control mode. Anyone who has followed Warren for any length of time recognizes this as a pattern, where he backs vile policies and then pretends that he never did - even when he did so on video for the world to see.
He explicitly compared gay marriage to incest and beastiality, then lied and said he didn't. He explicitly endorsed Prop 8 in California and told his followers to vote for that referendum, then lied and said he didn't. In both cases, we have him on video saying exactly what he later denied saying. And he has never owned up to the lies.
This is Rick Warren's MO. We should all be used to it by now. So pardon me if I don't join others in praising his disingenuous johnny-come-lately statement. If he actually meant it, he would have said it the first time he was asked about it.
Here's the video:
Politics
Comments
But he never takes sides!
Posted by: jake | December 11, 2009 9:36 AM
For all the religious liberals and their today accommodationists, keep in mind that the Ugandans were striving to live biblically correct, rather than politically correct. They got it right for the most technically they have to kill all the gays, just not send them to prison for life, religious liberals and their apologists among the secular sane merely repeat the politically correct attitudes forged long since the Bible was written.
Posted by: History Punk | December 11, 2009 9:40 AM
He can change the name of his church to "Windsock".
Posted by: democommie | December 11, 2009 9:51 AM
Rick Warren exemplifies all that is despicable about religionists.
Posted by: gary l. day | December 11, 2009 9:53 AM
More seriously he never speaks against the anti-free speech measures of the bill except by at most
"Finally, the freedom to make moral choices and our right to free expression are gifts endowed by God. Uganda is a democratic country with remarkable and wise people, and in a democracy everyone has a right to speak up. For these reasons, I urge you, the pastors of Uganda, to speak out against the proposed law."
The proposed bill also criminalizes support of homosexuality.
Posted by: Erp | December 11, 2009 9:56 AM
More seriously he never speaks against the anti-free speech measures of the bill except by at most
And he seems particularly concerned with the idea that pastors could be found in violation of the law if they don't disclose their knowledge of gay people. As if putting an exemption in for pastors would clarify the law and make it okay to arrest non-pastors for refusing to turn in their friends or family members to authorities.
Posted by: Odie | December 11, 2009 10:03 AM
And he seems particularly concerned with the idea that pastors could be found in violation of the law if they don't disclose their knowledge of gay people.
Well of course. They are the representatives of Jesus! Jesus made the universe and people and other stuff like that.
Posted by: 386sx | December 11, 2009 10:07 AM
The man is an entertainer who is in touch with his audience. He only says what he needs to to entertain. They clearly do not mind his little "inconsistencies". The fact that he is a lying contradictory sack of shit stands him will with his flock. By accepting him, they are too.
Posted by: MikeMa | December 11, 2009 10:14 AM
A compendium of photos of Rick Warren:
http://images.google.com/images?sourceid=chrome&q=douche+picture&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=2GEiS8CZGtSnlAeDz4mFCg&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=1&ved=0CBcQsAQwAA
I tried to make "Rick Warren" a link using the standard html tag; can someone please tell me why it didn't work?
Posted by: how | December 11, 2009 10:22 AM
'Rick Warren denies he's "conspiring" to "rid the world of homosexuals" '
http://www.talk2action.org/story/2009/12/10/183437/43
Excerpt:
"
Mega-pastor Warren has just released a statement condemning pending legislation, before Uganda's parliament, which critics have characterized as a "kill the gays" bill. Warren's newly stated opposition to the bill is, of course, welcome. But Warren's declaration contains blatant lies and statements that verge on the bizarre. Why does Rick Warren feel the need tell the world that he has not "conspired" with C. Peter Wagner (an under-publicized but powerful religious leader), or anyone, to "rid the world of homosexuals" ?
"
Posted by: Bruce Wilson | December 11, 2009 10:24 AM
Attached is a link to a post by Jeffrey Goldberg patting Reverend Warren on the back. Doesn't speak well for Mr. Goldberg.
http://jeffreygoldberg.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/12/rick_warren_denounces_the_ugan.php
Posted by: SLC | December 11, 2009 10:34 AM
The far right complains about the cultural elite, yet they never mention the religious elite: You know the people who claim to have a monopoly on rightousness, the people who think they their sect alone had the secret ticket to heaven.
Posted by: boarderthom | December 11, 2009 10:49 AM
So many lies, so much hypocrisy . . .
Uganda's current laws already criminalize homosexuality. Warren merely focuses his objections on:
a) the proposed execution portion of the new proposed law, and
b) pastors being in violation of the law if they receive information someone is gay or having gay sex.
He does not condemn the current criminalization laws nor the proposed criminalization laws either (beyond the two noted above). Wanting his cake and eating it as well, especially given how late this was forthcoming when it was clear the execution portion of this new law would not pass.
Warren has previously argued that his view of the Bible is justification to not treat others with respect, dignity, or 'like we would like to be treated', contra to his claim in this video. This was made explicit in his video to his church advocating its members and supporters oppose gay marriage in California. I assume Rick Warren doesn't want the law telling him he couldn't marry the person he loved and decided to marry and also assume he'd see it as a violation of his and his wife's constitutionally protected rights.
In fact, Warren's argument advocating that Christians must vote against gay marriage extends beyond any Biblical mandate and is certainly unconstitutional. He argued that merely because his and like-minded believers' interpretation of the Bible is in opposition of gay marriage, their position therefore obligates them to support prohibition by law even when it denies gays their equal rights. A far better position would be to oppose gay marriage in practice while recognizing gays' constitutional right to marry and all other rights Warren enjoys but objects to gays possessing or demanding be protected by the very government who protects Mr. Warren's rights.
Warren claims a moral high-ground on trying to minimize the spread of HIV/AIDS in this video; yet he also has restricted his offered aid to abstinence-only programs that prohibit the promotion of using condoms in spite of the empirical evidence such practice reduces the rate of infection. His ego and his ideology trump his actual concern about people contracting this disease.
Where does Jesus argue marriage is between one man and only one woman? That requires an extension of logic well beyond the empirical evidence. First we can't even validate Jesus even existed. Also, many scholars hypothesize that the following is an insert absent from the original Gospel of Matthew where followers subsequent to Jesus were looking to make an argument about divorce using the rhetorical fallacy of an 'argument from authority' to better support their position. Finally, the argument wasn't regarding where a man could have multiple wives, but his right to divorce his wife or to divorce his wife to marry another. To extend that logic in spite of the topic not even on the table is both disingenuous and intellectually dishonest. Here's the entire applicable RSV passage of Matthew 19:1-12
Posted by: Michael Heath | December 11, 2009 10:52 AM
Here's Rachel Maddow's authoritative report on Mr. Warrens' lies and hypocrisy as well: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/ns/msnbc_tv-rachel_maddow_show#34372297
Posted by: Michael Heath | December 11, 2009 10:58 AM
Are we ignoring the troll at #2?
Posted by: xebecs | December 11, 2009 11:40 AM
Xebecs - I don't think History Punk @ 2 is being a troll or defending Ugandan bigots. I think he's merely revealing the absurdity of following biblical law and the sanity of secular law.
Posted by: Michael Heath | December 11, 2009 11:53 AM
xebecs:
I second what Michael Heath says about History Punk.
Shorter Michael Heath @ 13. Rick Warren is a lying, opportunistic fuckbag. His "parishoners" run the gamut from the truly puzzled to the transparently hypocritical--just like every other faith's adherents.
Posted by: demoocommie | December 11, 2009 11:58 AM
He sure did remind us that gays are morally wrong.
Posted by: Heidi Anderson | December 11, 2009 12:22 PM
Morally wrong for him, I mean.
What I meant to say, but rather flippantly did not write, was that for someone who claims he is against this law, he sure does make the argument that he still thinks that something is wrong with it.
It is like the opposite of the Seinfeld episode.
"I don't want you to KILL gays, not that I think gays are ok or anything!"
Posted by: Heidi Anderson | December 11, 2009 12:24 PM
A recent post by an American anti-gay activist, Scott Lively, attempts to put some historical context into this bill (which he does, rather vaguely, describe as "unacceptably harsh"):
The various Wikipedia articles on all this seem to tiptoe around the specifics: one on those killed just says it was "for their faith"; the one on Mwanga II (no link to bypass sciblogs moderation rule) hints at a sexual side to the story.
Does anybody here know more, from more reliable sources, about any of this?
Posted by: Pierce R. Butler | December 11, 2009 12:32 PM
@16 and 17: I have difficulty reading #2 that way.
I remember the nom "History Punk" but can't attach writings to it. If you know HP to be non-trollish, I accept your assessment.
Carry on.
Posted by: xebecs | December 11, 2009 12:33 PM
Look, I have piles of gay friends. I let them use my bathroom. However, I won't marry them. Mainly because the state of Maryland does not allow gay marriage and I am not an official officiant.
My post was designed to point out that for allow the talk of tolerance from religious liberals and their fellow travelers among secularists, the truth is that religious fundies like the Ugandans nutters who past this law are far more biblically correct when they call for and attempt stuff like this. If you read the bible, the bible is clear what happens to the gays. All the babble about love and Jesus is a product of religious liberals trying to correct their holy book without having to admits its errors.
Posted by: History Punk | December 11, 2009 12:45 PM
In pretty much any other situation, I would be like, "Well at least he came to the right decision. We might as well forgive him." But seriously? "Executing the gays is bad," was too ambiguous a statement for him?
Posted by: Brandon | December 11, 2009 12:51 PM
Check out the most recent Reasonable Doubts podcast, "WWJD?" It talks about the not-so-nice attitude of Jesus and the context of his teachings. While you can find good stuff in the New Testament and even the Old Testament, there are so many awful things in there, even from the mouth of Jesus, that it is not what anyone would call a desirable bedrock of moral or ethical teaching.
What you also see too often with religious liberals is a kind of "head in the sand" attitude. They don't call the conservative biblical literalists out on their barbaric notions of morality often enough. They mostly act as if they don't exist or they're not a problem. My brother is a moderate-liberal Christian and he thinks that Biblical conservatives are just not understanding the Bible. I asked him if he's even read the damn thing, which he had to admit he hadn't. That is likely the state of most religious moderates and liberals.
Posted by: Shawn Shelton | December 11, 2009 1:07 PM
As has been asked elsewhere:
Has Warren told the Ugandans he thinks the law is bad?
Or are his statements just for local consumption?
I seem to remember another religion being accused of saying one thing in the US and something different elsewhere.
Posted by: rnb | December 11, 2009 1:24 PM
rnb: I remember Mike Huckabee making a speech in which he sternly chastized his fellow Republicans for all their unseemly and dishonest smears against everyone else not like them. Pretty brave speech, if you ignore the fact that he gave it a) long after the damage (from which he benefitted) had been done, and b) in Tokyo.
Posted by: Raging Bee | December 11, 2009 1:30 PM
If you read the bible, the bible is clear what happens to the gays.
If YOU read the Bible, those "clear" bits about "what happens to the gays" are only found in parts that are widely understood to be either outdated (like Leviticus), or obscure, peripheral and far from clear (like Romans). So please quit doing the bigots' work by pissing on those liberals who are trying to do the right thing by bringing their religion up to date. You DO want people to update their beliefs to fit reality, right?
Posted by: Raging Bee | December 11, 2009 1:38 PM
Besides, if the Ugandan gay-bashers are in direct violation of two Commandments (don't kill, don't bear false witness) and the central teachings of Jesus himself, then you can't call them "Biblically correct."
Posted by: Raging Bee | December 11, 2009 1:41 PM
Re: #20
There are more than hints at a sexual side to the story if you look up "Lwanga" and "Mwanga" in Wikipedia. Raping (or "defiling") his pages and courtiers was Mwanga's way of forcing them to renounce their religious beliefs.
If we supposed that Lwanga and the other martyrs had been female and were murdered for refusing to have sex with Mwanga would the people of Uganda forsake heterosexual intercourse today? Of course not.
Rape is rape. The fact that the rapist was the same sex as the victim is no more to the point than the fact that he wore glasses or was a member of the royal family.
Posted by: Blondin | December 11, 2009 1:59 PM
Re: History Punk - - -
Troll.
The first proof is this statement:
"religious liberals and their apologists among the secular sane merely repeat the politically correct attitudes forged long since the Bible was written"
It maligns non-conservative Christians with a false, dismissive vision of their theology, and asserts that the relatively modern interpretation of fundamentalist Christians is accurate.
History Punk, the Bible was NOT written in English, and accurate translation and in-context analysis of the relevant verses does not support the 'homosexuality is sin' heresy.
The fact is that progressive, or as you dismissed it 'politically correct' theology relies on closer examination of the relevant texts, deeper examination of the translation issues, than fundamentalist theology does. In other words, progressive theology is actually closer to how 'the Bible was written' than conservative theology.
"My post was designed to point out that for allow the talk of tolerance from religious liberals and their fellow travelers among secularists, the truth is that religious fundies like the Ugandans nutters who past this law are far more biblically correct when they call for and attempt stuff like this."
Your point is false, and defamatory, making it a clear example of trolling. The "Ugandans(sic) nutters" are in violation of multiple explicit teachings from Jesus, from the summation of the Law - love your neighbor as yourself, to the multiple, consistent demands for civil justice.
"If you read the bible, the bible is clear what happens to the gays."
Anyone who makes such a claim, has not studied the Bible with any sincerity or effort.
The Bible cannot be 'clear on what happens to gays' - for Hebrew had no word for homosexual, and the passages from Leviticus address married men cheating on their wives by having sex with priests of other/false religions. The New Testament was composed primarily in Greek, with some Aramaic phrases. Though there were two very commonly used words in Greek when the NT was composed, neither of those words (erestes and eranamos) appear in any of the NT texts.
The heresy 'homosexuality is sin' is a construct built on fraudulent translations, context-stripping, and irrational assumption.
"All the babble about love and Jesus is a product of religious liberals trying to correct their holy book without having to admits its errors.
Classic troll-speak, with a large helping of arrogance. It is clear that these posts were written by a fundamentalist of some sort. Additionally, the last quote proves beyond all doubt that it's author has neither studied the text he/she opined about, nor respects it enough to report accurately on its contents. Yet the bare minimum for creating a relevant, useful opinion about something it knowledge of the source, and respect enough for the source to treat it accurately.
Posted by: David | December 11, 2009 4:42 PM
Bee, if religionists of any stripe were to indeed update their beliefs to fit reality, they would all have to acknowledge that all their "sacred" writings (bible, koran, torah, etc.) are obsolete, and have been since the advent of both the Enlightenment and the invention of the scientific method. That ain't gonna happen.
Posted by: gary l. day | December 11, 2009 4:43 PM
Re David @ 30: Actually, David, I'm thinking poe. History Punk's first paragraph @ 22 is obviously a reference to the Keith Bardwell incident. He said something very similar when trying to make excuses for not wedding an interracial couple.
Plus, his website doesn't look like a crazy person's.
Posted by: Kris | December 11, 2009 5:04 PM
Look raging bee and David,
Those are some very nice interpretations of Christianity. However, we all know that you both lack empirical evidence to sustain your beliefs. Hayden White once noted that historical interpretations are less accepted for the evidence on which they are based, but for moral and aesthetic reasons i.e. they teach us and others a lesson how to behave or act or they sound good and make us look good. The same is true of religious interpretations. You guys like being accepted in polite liberal company in real life and at sites like this. So you are naturally going to believe biblical interpretations that support being nice to gays. So you declare that anti-gay bible passages are obsolete or outdated without any direct scriptural references. Yours is a minority opinion within Christianity now and throughout history, which is why the gays have been closeted for so long. Besides, as the bible and its history of interpretation shows, things like "thou shall not kill" or "love your neighbor" have only recently, to a minority faction of the religion, come to mean opposing the use of the death penalty for things that other portions of the Bible call for it.
"The fact is that progressive, or as you dismissed it 'politically correct' theology relies on closer examination of the relevant texts, deeper examination of the translation issues, than fundamentalist theology does. In other words, progressive theology is actually closer to how 'the Bible was written' than conservative theology."
This is evidence free nonsense. It's an assertion that lacks any empirical support, but makes you feel good.
"The heresy 'homosexuality is sin' is a construct built on fraudulent translations, context-stripping, and irrational assumption. "
This is an interesting theory, how do you explain so many people getting it so wrong for such a long time, including all those people who studied the bible as hard as you did, possibly harder? Yeah, never mind, this is a modern interpretation that arose as it started to become okay to be gay.
"Additionally, the last quote proves beyond all doubt that it's author has neither studied the text he/she opined about, nor respects it enough to report accurately on its contents"
Look, I appreciate your guys' efforts, but if you really want to fix the bigotry arising from Bible thumpers you're going to have to correct the Bible. So go through and with as much evidence as you can muster, rewrite it and then justify those revisions with some real evidence.
Again, your assertion lacks empirical evidence. Reading the bible and its attending interpretations are a mandatory component of every Catholic school boy or altar servers education. As demonstrated by my high marks, I was good at it.
Posted by: History Punk | December 11, 2009 5:23 PM
Um, isn't ignoring the troll a good thing. Nah, why don't you just go out of your way to push the thread into his path, great job.
Posted by: Drekab | December 11, 2009 5:26 PM
Off-topic, but never make the mistake of going to a nudie bar on "context-stripper" night. It's terribly disappointing.
Posted by: Modusoperandi | December 11, 2009 5:32 PM
@20 ... Thomas Pakenham's "The Scramble for Africa" mentions Mwanga (page 314) and some incidents.
Apparently a Christian page in the court of King Mwanga refused to participate in what was called an "unmentionable abomination", and Mwanga had the page beaten. A bit later, Mwanga ordered some Christian pages hacked to death or castrated. He topped off the rampage by rounding up a couple dozen more (both Protestant and Catholic) and having them burned to death.
Pakenham gives his source as the CMS Intelligencer of 1886 (http://www.cms-uk.org/Resources/CrowtherCentre/Archives/tabid/194/Default.aspx). The Protestant missionary in that area was Alexander Mackay, and there were also a few French priests.
Posted by: Tsu Dho Nimh | December 11, 2009 5:38 PM
I've never cared for the "ignore the troll" thing, unless ignoring is to be followed up by deleting or disemvoweling. Ugly speech is speech that must be answered.
I wasn't sure about the initial comment, which is why I asked what I did. And guess what? Now I know: not a troll.
Posted by: xebecs | December 11, 2009 5:38 PM
Unrelated but funny. Iowa's nutcase in Congress is at it again.
U.S. Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, went to a White House holiday function. And what was on the menu? Cookies and scandal.
Both go great with milk, incidentally.
From Fox News:
Any fan of Cookie Monster on Sesame Street knows that “C” is for cookie.
But at the Obama White House, “A” may be for acorn — as in acorn cookies served at Monday’s annual Christmas party.
The chocolate cookies shaped like an acorn were quite a hit with Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa.
“I didn’t expect to see such stark symbolism,” King said in an e-mail
The cookies, obviously, were a confectionery White House nod to ACORN, the scandal-tinged community organizing group that clearly stole the 2008 election.
King, according to Fox, pocketed several of the cookies. He also made it out with a large smoked salmon. OK, I made that last part up.
Telegraphing coded political messages using butter, sugar, flour and a dash of vanilla is very clever indeed. And sources close to the presidential oven suggest it won’t be the last time.
Other symbolic holiday cookiegrams are planned. We have obtained a secret recipe memo:
Official White House Cookie List
Red Stars with Socialist Sprinkles
Peppermint Bailouts
Marx Bars
Cashew Clunkers
Pecan Kenyas
Death Panel Brittle
Birther Bark
Glenn Beck Nut Clusters
Fist-Bump Fudge
Clearly, the vigilant congressman is going to need bigger pockets.
My family has acorn ornaments on our Christmas tree. It’s a tradition started by my German ancestors, who considered them to be symbols of good luck and rebirth.
Little did they know.
http://gazetteonline.com/blogs/24-hour-dorman/2009/12/10/king-uncovers-cookie-conspiracy
Posted by: Owen | December 11, 2009 7:58 PM
Check out The Promiscuous Reader, a great blogger who is an older Gay Man. He is very, very skeptical about pro-Gay reinterpretations of the Bible and he makes a lot of sense. Sadly, as some of his posts have noted, History Punk is much closer to the logn term, traditional understanding of Christian morality. One would like top believe otherwise in our "enlightened" era...but the Bible is NOT, overall, pro-Gay in any way.
I would also note that modern translations and interpretations reflect the historical development of Church doctrine. Is there really a singular, "pure" source for the Bible that we can return to? Why is this source better than the interpretations of church councils and historic understandings of morality?
Now...if you want to argue that there are other sins that are mentioned more frequently in "the" Bible and that fundies are nuts for showing so much "Gay Panic" and focusing on what is after all a quite minority issue...go for it.
History Punk's underlying point also remains valid. He is rephrasing in a somewhat intemperate manner the basic arguments of many New Atheists, i.e....Christian liberals and their secular apologists provide cover for and an environment in which fundamentalist wackaloonery survives, thrives and even grows.
Posted by: Brian M | December 11, 2009 8:00 PM
Here is a pretty good sample from Promiscuous, who imo is a fantastic writer that all free-thinkers should peruse...he hoists us with our own petards sometimes.
http://thisislikesogay.blogspot.com/2008/05/you-gotta-tell-us-you-love-us-so-we.html
Posted by: Brian M | December 11, 2009 8:16 PM
History Punk (which is a fairly ironic name, in the Alanis Morisette sense)...
So what you're saying is that if the modern fundamentalist understanding of the Bible is correct (i.e. the English text is literally correct), then fundamentalists are right and liberals are wrong. This is what we call "circular reasoning".
For what it's worth, we mainliners, liberals and ultra-liberals are not the least bit changed by your assertions. After all, we hear them from fundamentalists all the time.
The only really puzzling part is why someone who is presumably an atheist would take the side of religious fundamentalists, especially on such an obviously irrational premise as this. Did you have a strict religious upbringing by any chance, and have never really questioned its assumptions?
Posted by: Pseudonym | December 11, 2009 8:49 PM
Are we sure that we haven't just been misinterpreting Warren this whole time? Maybe the God he's so thrilled about isn't Jehovah, but Janus.
Posted by: Tom Foss | December 11, 2009 10:51 PM
For what it's worth, we mainliners, liberals and ultra-liberals are not the least bit changed by your assertions. After all, we hear them from fundamentalists all the time.
So Jesus didn't walk on water, like those crazy Jesus lizards? And he didn't fly like a birdie too? Tweet tweeeet!!
Posted by: 386sx | December 12, 2009 5:13 AM
Did you have a strict religious upbringing by any chance, and have never really questioned its assumptions?
You mean the one where Jesus took off into the sky like a birdie plane and "ascended" into orbit with the angels and the other birdie creatures? Ready for takeoff, runway nine! Fly birdie Jesus, fly!!
Posted by: 386sx | December 12, 2009 5:22 AM
The Bible cannot be 'clear on what happens to gays' - for Hebrew had no word for homosexual, and the passages from Leviticus address married men cheating on their wives by having sex with priests of other/false religions.
"22 Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination."
So what's with the "as with womankind" part. Anyways, you forgot to mention the priests/false religions of confusion...
"23 Neither shalt thou lie with any beast to defile thyself therewith: neither shall any woman stand before a beast to lie down thereto: it is confusion."
The heresy 'homosexuality is sin' is a construct built on fraudulent translations, context-stripping, and irrational assumption.
Yeah, nobody ever tries to rewrite the Bible at all. Naaaahhh... not at all. Yeah, that's the ticket. Meet my wife Morgan Fairchild...
Posted by: 386sx | December 12, 2009 5:39 AM
Looks more like Morgan Freeman, am I rite? [Hi five]
Posted by: Modusoperandi | December 12, 2009 9:08 AM
Thanks for the additional info, Blondin & Tsu Dho Nimh.
And for all you guys arguing about what's biblically consistent - haven't you ever noticed that the bible is not self-consistent?
Posted by: Pierce R. Butler | December 12, 2009 10:59 AM
The notions of Biblical inerrancy and literalism are themselves completely ahistorical, and are also comparatively recent in their origin. The teaching of sola scriptura - the belief that the canonical Bible contains all that is necessary for salvation, and that it is the only authoritative source of doctrine and morals - was an idea invented by the Protestant reformers, and has no basis in the Bible itself. In reality, the Bible in its modern form was compiled from numerous different works by the councils of the early Church. The books were selected to exclude those which gave support to dissenting theological viewpoints, such as Gnosticism, and to advance the beliefs of the majority. And it's clear that some of the authors of biblical texts had no idea that their writings would later be perceived as "scripture"; Paul, for instance, was simply writing letters of advice to his friends in other Christian communities. He makes clear when he is passing on traditions (such as when he writes about the Eucharist), but the bulk of his work is simply couched as his personal opinion. (Not to mention that scholars are uncertain how many of the "Pauline epistles" were actually written by Paul.)
Sola scriptura, therefore, makes no sense even within the intellectual confines of Christian belief. And it is also worth noting that many of the world's Christians do not subscribe to sola scriptura. Catholics don't; nor do the Orthodox churches; nor do Mormons; nor, today, do many liberal Protestants. Rather, it's a doctrine associated primarily with evangelical Protestantism, which is a very narrow subset of Christianity.
I used to be a liberal Christian, but am now an atheist. But it seems to me that some of those commenting here are working from narrow, evangelical Protestant assumptions about Christian doctrine. It is perfectly possible, and intellectually coherent, to be a Christian and yet not to believe that the Bible is inerrant or infallible. Therefore, it is perfectly coherent for a Christian to acknowledge that the Old Testament condemns homosexuality (which it does, unambiguously), and that Paul spoke of homosexual conduct in disparaging terms, while not believing that homosexuality is a sin - because a Christian doesn't have to believe that everything in the Bible is authoritative, unless he or she is an evangelical Protestant.
As I've said, I personally haven't seen any evidence for any sort of God, nor for the resurrection of Jesus or any of the core teachings of Christianity, so I am not personally a believer. But even if I were, I would not be obliged to hold that homosexuality is in any way wrong.
Posted by: Walton | December 12, 2009 11:47 AM
I was raised in a middling right church, moved to the left and have now settled in atheism. History punk is right. He's not advocating the conservative interperetations of the bible. He's saying that it is anti-gay. How could it not be? It reflects the values of a sometimes nomadic and constantly warring bronze age tribe and later the supposed preachings of a man who was then a preacher in a fringe Jewish cult. They were not a terribly open minded bunch and not a society that was readily accepting of outsiders and people who didn't toe the religious line.
I think that religion must liberalize if it's to remain relevant in the modern world, but it's wise to remember the ancient worldview that is at the heart of holy tomes.
Posted by: Scrabcake | December 12, 2009 2:40 PM
And could someone explain to me why Sodom and Gomorrah is an an anti gay story? The villiagers wanted to have a crazy orgy with the angels visiting lot. Why is the fact that the angels were male more important than the fact they were angels? If I were god I'd be a lot more peeved that people were lusting after my angels than that they wanted *gay* sex with them. I think the take away lesson here is that god hates angel rapists!
A more thoughtful point to the story is this: we know from the Ptolemaic Egyptian Contendings of Horus and Seth, where Horus is raped by seth that at least the helenized Egyptians viewed anal rape as an act of humiliation of the victim and dominance of the agressor. So if our villagers wanted to rape god's angels, perhapse the ancient Hebrews would have interpreted this as wanting to shame and humiliate their god. In which case, gods destruction of the city makes more sense.
In no way can I interpret the main point of this story as god hates gays.
Posted by: Scrabcake | December 12, 2009 2:58 PM
386sx, I think you might have me confused with someone who has the slightest clue what you're talking about. I think you didn't quite get the "ultra-liberal" part. See Walton's post for an explanation.
Scrabcake:
History punk is right. He's not advocating the conservative interperetations of the bible. He's saying that it is anti-gay. How could it not be?
The very least you can say about the Bible is that it displays an ignorance (by fairly recent standards) about what homosexuality actually is. For example, when you read the passages in Leviticus in conjunction with the verses that surround them, they are usually in the middle of passages targeting the worship practices of surrounding deities (e.g. "do not sacrifice your children to Molech"; this was apparently enough of a problem that the Hebrews needed to be reminded not to do this).
The Bible says nothing whatsoever about non-exploitative, committed, loving same-sex relationships. Of course, it doesn't say anything complementary about them, either. The very concept was inconceivable to those who wrote it.
So no, I think it's accurate to say that the Bible is not "anti-gay", if "ignorant about gay" is allowed as an option. It's anti-lots of things that seem dumb by today's standards (e.g. wool blend socks), but sexual orientation isn't one of them.
Posted by: Pseudonym | December 12, 2009 6:51 PM
Spoken like a true denialist, Pseudonym. The only way they could have been "ignorant about gay" would be if they didn;'t have any imaginations, and/or there weren't any gay people back then.
Posted by: 386sx | December 12, 2009 7:43 PM
It's good to know that you know what thoughts they had in their minds though! What they knew and what they didn't know! Spoken like a true apologist...
Posted by: 386sx | December 12, 2009 7:55 PM
I think that the simplest and most accurate explanation is that the writer of the Old Testament, Ted Testament, had a bad experience at summer camp.
Posted by: Modusoperandi | December 12, 2009 9:11 PM
386sx, I think you might have me confused with someone who has the slightest clue what you're talking about. I think you didn't quite get the "ultra-liberal" part.
I guess that means Jesus didn't walk on water or jump up into the sky like a big birdie on a pogo stick. Tweeeet tweeeet!!
Posted by: 386sx | December 13, 2009 10:17 AM
I agree with Walton. One of the ironies about pro-gay Christians, though, is that most of them take the fundamentalist approach that the Bible is inerrant, contains the Truth, and if you interpret it correctly, you'll get the Truth too. So it couldn't be antigay, because then it would be wrong, so it must be either silent or pro-gay. So now we have gay Christians arguing -- well, claiming, really -- that Jesus approved the gay relationship of the Centurion and his boy, not so many years after they were arguing that all ancient same-sex relationships were exploitative and pedophilic, so of course the Bible condemns such awful behavior. Self-consistency isn't a gay Christian trait either.
It's possible to reject inerrancy and be a Christian, as Walton says, but it seems to be very rare. (For the record, I'm an atheist.) Those who are interested in pursuing the possibility might look for books like Dennis Nineham's The Use and Abuse of the Bible or James Barr's Beyond Fundamentalism, or more recently, Dale Martin's wonderfulfully titled Sex and the Single Savior.
Posted by: Duncan | December 13, 2009 12:05 PM
Duncan @ 56 states:
Not even close. In 2006 Gallup measured 80% of Americans claiming they were Christians. Gallup also measured that 28% believed the Bible was the "actual word of God". 49% believed it was "Inspired, but not everything to be taken literally."
Posted by: Michael Heath | December 13, 2009 12:20 PM
Not even close. In 2006 Gallup measured 80% of Americans claiming they were Christians. Gallup also measured that 28% believed the Bible was the "actual word of God". 49% believed it was "Inspired, but not everything to be taken literally."
It would be nice if they would have worded it better, because that doesn't tell me much. (Maybe I'm just too dumb or too cynical or something.) "Not everything to be taken literally" does not mean that it can't still be the "actual word of God" or that it can't still be "inerrant".
Posted by: 386sx | December 13, 2009 1:09 PM
386sx: Do you or do you not agree that sexual orientation wasn't a concept that even psychology experts didn't understand until the 20th century?
I would have thought that saying that the Bible doesn't say anything about sexual orientation is no more controversial than saying that Aristotle didn't say anything about quantum mechanics.
Posted by: Pseudonym | December 13, 2009 6:20 PM
Michael Heath: As 386sx pointed out, "literally" does not mean "inerrant." (It's even harder to make sense of these numbers, since so many people have no idea what "literally" means, especially with regard to the interpretation of the Bible.) In fact, non-literal interpretations are necessary to preserve the inerrancy of the Bible, and fundamentalists are lavish with non-literal interpretations to that end. Where fundamentalists and liberals disagree is on which passages to take literally and which not, and how to interpret the ones you don't take literally. In any case, the polls you cite have no bearing on what I said, and your misreading of them is further evidence that I was right.
Here's a good example. Jesus says in the gospels that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God. I'm not sure what a "literal" interpretation of this saying would be, since it's built on a figure of speech to begin with. But at face value Jesus is saying that it is impossible for a rich man to enter the kingdom. Few fundamentalists read this passage that way, but then few liberals do either. Another would be the saying from the Sermon on the Mount that if your eye leads you to sin, pluck it out, for it is better to go to heaven with one eye than to have your whole body cast into hell. Who takes this literally? And granted that it wasn't meant, one hopes, to be taken literally, how should followers of Jesus interpret and apply it?
Pseudonym: It all depends on what you mean by "sexual orientation," I guess. If you take it literally, so that it only counts if those exact words are used, then of course the Bible has nothing to say about "sexual orientation." The Bible doesn't contain the words "sex" or "gender," so I guess it has nothing to say about those subjects either.
If you mean more generally, that the Bible has nothing to say about the fact that some persons' sexual energy is directed to one sex or the other, then Romans 1:26-28 is what you're looking for. Paul explains some men's lust for other males as a consequence of failing/refusing to worship Yahweh. It's a batty and incoherent explanation, but no more than contemporary 'scientific' theories. It seems that you assume that the modern concept of sexual orientation is the correct way to understand human sexuality, but that begs a lot of questions.
Anyway, contemporary science doesn't really have a concept of sexual orientation either. All the highly touted research on the nature and genesis of sexual orientation assumes that males who have sex with other males are women-like, and vice versa for females: LeVay's claim that gay men have the INAH-3 of a woman in the body of a man, or the notion that gay men were exposed to excessive 'female' hormones in the womb, which is why we present our rumps to attractive males, just like women do; or we have female-like ring fingers, and so on. None of them have any idea why -- or even that -- some males prefer to penetrate other males; for them the question is only why some males want to be penetrated. Insofar as there is a concept of sexual orientation involved, it is all about sex/gender and not about the direction of one's erotic interest. (See my post here for a more detailed argument.)
The Bible is not, by the way, the only information we have about the ancient world. Other cultures had other notions about why males may love other males, and females other females. Your analogy to Aristotle and quantum mechanics doesn't hold up, because "sexual orientation" is not a concept on the same level as subatomic particles; it should, at least, refer to human behavior and feeling that is observable at the human level.
Posted by: Duncan | December 13, 2009 7:55 PM
Duncan, what I mean is that it was not commonly appreciated at the time that homosexuality is a variety of normal. It's true that science doesn't have a coherent picture of what causes one person to be homosexual and another to be heterosexual (or even if there is only one "cause"), but this is beside the point.
The Hebrew world believed homosexuality to be a deviation from nature. To the extent that there is a scientific consensus on anything about sexual orientation, there is at least broad agreement that it is part of nature.
Posted by: Pseudonym | December 13, 2009 10:47 PM
I would have thought that saying that the Bible doesn't say anything about sexual orientation is no more controversial than saying that Aristotle didn't say anything about quantum mechanics.
I'm not sure. I would guess that gay people back then would haver known they were gay. Anyway, I thought you were trying to say that the Bible wasn't anti-gay in Leviticus. Sorry for my bad reading skills. Good luck with the flying birdie Jesus thing.
Posted by: 386sx | December 14, 2009 1:35 PM
386sx, I'm still not convinced that Leviticus is "anti-gay" (as opposed to "anti-cult-prostitution"), but we might leave that question for the historians.
BTW, I still have no clue what you're talking about with the "flying birdie" comment. I think you're trying to insinuate that I don't realise that the New Testament is partly mythological narrative, but I can't be sure. Feel free to explain if you want to.
Posted by: Pseudonym | December 15, 2009 12:35 AM