Long Journey Home: Reflections of an 'immoral' person

[Maine-ah]

http://knox.villagesoup.com/column/columnpost/long-journey-home-reflections-of-an-immoral-person/288745#289090

This is a letter to the local paper about the recent vote in Maine to allow same-sex marriage. I thought that many here would like to read it.

I am a lesbian. My partner and I have a house, a mortgage and two dogs. Had Question 1 failed, we hoped to celebrate our 10th anniversary in March by getting married.

Since Maine's gay-marriage law was repealed, I have read a number of comments from people in the "Yes on 1" camp to the effect that gay and lesbian people are, de facto, immoral. As a result, I have had to do a lot of thinking.

And I'm left with a number of questions: If people who form loving, faithful relationships with others of their own gender are immoral, are bankers and others who lend at interest also immoral? Lending at interest is condemned by the Bible, and it arguably harms more people than the loving relationships of law-abiding citizens.

Conversely, while slavery is not actually required by anything in the Bible, it is treated as a routine and entirely acceptable arrangement. Nowhere in Scripture is God depicted as condemning the owning of one person by another. (In fact, the Bible says a slave owner should not be punished if he beats his slave to the point where the slave dies, as long as the death isn't immediate. Really. It's right there in Exodus.) Is it therefore right to own slaves? And if not, why not, since God apparently thinks it's OK?

~ letter continues at the link above ~ I wasn't sure as to how much of it I could post.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

1. Did some of the folks who scribed in the good book own slaves????

[Bluenorthwest]

2. Of course. Additionally it is not possible to quote

a Biblical author who condemns gay people without quoting an author who also supports slavery fully. Here are examples from the New Testament.

Colossians 3:22 Slaves, in all things obey those who are your masters on earth, not with external service, as those who merely please men, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord.

1 Timothy 6:1 All who are under the yoke as slaves are to regard their own masters as worthy of all honor so that the name of God and our doctrine will not be spoken against.


Any Christians here buy that stuff? If not, time to rethink your view of the 'Holy Scriptures'. Does Obama buy this stuff? Does Michelle?

[DavidDvorkin]

3. Oh, that's all metaphorical

I assume that would be the response from those who take those books seriously.