Fischer: Teach Sodom and Gomorrah as Gay History

December 14, 2014 by Ed Brayton

California has a law requiring that American history classes include information about the contributions of LGBT people to the country. Bryan Fischer says he’s just fine with that, as long as they start by teaching the ridiculous myth of Sodom and Gomorrah.

“I will support you teaching homosexuality in California’s public schools on the condition that you start with Sodom and Gomorrah,” he said. “If you want to teach gay history in your public schools, then you’ve got to teach gay history. Gay history starts with Sodom and Gomorrah, so if you start there, you can teach all the gay history that you want.”

Except Sodom and Gomorrah is a myth. It didn’t really happen. This would be like teaching European history and starting with Atlantis.

httpv://youtu.be/6-owcsvfPpc

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Chiroptera

Or like teaching biology and starting with the Garden of Eden. Oh, wait!
Bronze Dog

How about teaching about wise old Solomon and all his wives and concubines as the history of traditional chattel marriage?
Michael Heath

Bryan Fischer states:

Gay history starts with Sodom and Gomorrah . . .

I thought gay sex was a primary reason that God slaughtered everybody but the people on Noah’s ark. Where that happened way before God took down Sodom and Gomorrah.
some bastard on the internet

Or teaching Geology and starting with The Flood. Oh, wait…
blf

I wonder if he means — not that this is any more true, it’s just as daft — sodomy and gonorrhea?
anubisprime

Somebody who has obviously no education of any repute does not get a say in the education of others…simples!

With such an ignorant and fatuous opening comment, no more really needs to be said about the matter, laughing and pointing at a self made imbecile on the other hand is mandatory.
blf

Re me@5, Huh… Apparently, the term sodomy does come from the fantasy. I learned something new!
markmckee

Arguing against Fisher’s use of Sodom and G story because it is a myth is the wrong way to argue with men like Fisher. Many of his followers don’t believe it to be a myth. Better, IMHO to point out that the story was not about gay relationships at all, it was about promiscuity and decadence. Indeed, one could argue that since monogamous gay marriage is the opposite of the decadence and promiscuity and “sex with anything that moves” portrayed in this story, the lesson of that story should be to promote gay marriage and not condemn it. Indeed, the entire condemnation of man on man sex in the bible is arguably a condemnation of promiscuity and can easily be argued as not an argument against monogamous gay relationships. And since religionists use context and analysis to allow the eating of shellfish today, and not executing recalcitrant children, why must we avoid context and analysis when we interpret proscriptions on gay relationships?

And if that argument fails to sway anyone, point out that Lot dealt with the decadent hordes that wanted to have sex with those “strangers” that the Bible says were angels, Lot instead offered the crowd his virgin daughters for sex. Something that is quite despicable by moral standards nearly everywhere except in Fisher’s story.

Offering your children to hordes at the door for sex kind of puts a damper on using ANY of the Sodom and Gomorrah stories as tales to teach modern morality, dontchathink?

To me, keeping the arguments against using Bible stories for modern morality by staying in the believers frame of reference will do more to further logic and sanity then pointing out the mythical basis of the stories. Just my 2 cents.
matty1

I was told the Sodom and Gomorah story was about hospitality and respect for guests. The ‘moral’ is about the view, still found in parts of the Middle East that once you accept someone as a guest in your home you have a duty to protect them even over your family.
dingojack

Hey Bryan, ever read that book you claim to love so much?

Ezekiel 16:49:

“Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy.”

Dingo
markmckee

Yes, Matty, but this is an interpretation and explanation. This demonstrates my point that religionists are just fine resorting context and interpretation and analysis when they want to justify what they want to justify in Bible stories.

Frankly, I think its despicable. And it is just one of many truly despicable bible morality plays that most believers have no idea exist at all.
lordshipmayhem

Ah, but Atlantis DOES exist! She’s on display at the Kennedy Space Centre Visitor Complex.

Got bugger-all to do with ancient European history, but she exists.
khms

#10 dingojack

Ezekiel 16:49:

“Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy.”

Ah. So the US is the modern Sodom. American Exceptionalism, epidemic-level obesity, leisure culture, capitalistic excesses … sounds like a match! Of course, if this was from some other book, they’d be crying about envy and/or anti-Americanism …

In fact, I wonder how many negative comments one could gather from US Christians (for example) by showing them some less well known Bible quotes without telling them where they’re from, or inventing some fictional, other-culture origin. Or, contrariwise, approving ones showing quotes from some suspect-to-them origins – Marx, Hitler, the Quran, Darwin, what-have-you.
frankb

All good points here. Another problem has to do with those angels. Considering how important clothing was for gender identity, how do we know they were male? Another problem is with the supernatural angle. Supernatural beings manifesting on the physical plane to put Lot in a bind seems so unfair to every one in town including the angles. If I were one of those angles and were hearing the mod screaming for me I would vow never to volunteer for any Earth assignments again.
frankb

angels – angles. aarrrgh.
dingojack

“And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me”.

Dingo
dingojack

frankb – “Non Angli, sed angeli “.*

Dingo

———

* OMG Gregory the Great was in reality — Saul Alinsky (a.k.a. ‘The Great Satan’!) viz:

“….is a world not of angels, but of angles where men speak of moral principles but act on power principles” – Rules for Radicals
U Frood

The lesson from Sodom and Gomorrah is “Rape is bad”. That’s what the example the Bible gives of S&G’s sin is, attempted Gang Rape.

Lot attempted to offer his daughters up instead (because he’s an Excellent Father!), but that would have been just as evil if the mob had accepted it.
peterh

Fischer can be so wrong on so many topics so fast . . . . . . . .
magistramarla

Some school districts in California are beginning to offer and even require ethnic studies for graduation in an effort to bring about better racial understanding in the state.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/12/san-francisco-ethnic-studies_n_6312008.html?utm_hp_ref=san-francisco&ir=San%20Francisco

I can’t wait to see the xtians and other bigots freak out about that.
thebookofdave

I wonder if Bryan Fischer would approve of the moral lessons contained in the full Sodom and Gomorrah account: especially the epilogue, where God permits drunkenness and incestuous sexual predation.
peterh

@ #21:

Of course, the cherry-picked bits the fundies choose to support their idiocy are beyond question, but the average doubting person with even a modicum of critical thinking who questions the bibble’s multitude of quite problematic bits is obviously in the advance guard of the war on xinanity.
anubisprime

No doubt the ‘wisdom’ that this doofus regurgitates is only aimed at an audience where education is not, nor ever has been, a priority.

It explains so much about the sheer garbage that mouthpieces spew up, because they know it is never questioned because that capacity of analytical ability and self responsibility has been eradicated from the intended audience since birth,.

It seems that these target folk are corralled into having those traits removed from their character and transferred to their ‘betters’ and certainly to those that pose as god fearing patriots that hate government and Obama in particular.

All they have to do is follow like sheep, nod in agreement whatever fatuous brain dead claim the scammers can conjure up and dig into their wallets on a regular basis..

In the background the assumption is that to disagree is to go to hell and at the very least to be a hater of ‘merica and therefore god’s enemy …simples!

And that trait of total abdication of knowledge is partially encouraged by laws and legislation of a culture that fawns over and are sycophantic to any claim of ‘jeebus-b-my-co-pilot’…and the culprits get away with the anti-social behavior, including totally invented balderdash which echoes around their cult for generations even when thoroughly debunked numerous times, as if it is their right, which in many states it is!

Very rarely is their collective perfidy pulled up in the media, and never on a national level.

They can virtually say what they want, and with the prevailing attitude of law and the legion numbers they preach to…they get away with it.

That is why every integrity light doofus and his dog wants to have a rightwing radio slot…it is low hanging fruit and the takings are enormous.
composer99

So Bryan Fischer, in response to hearing that California requires students to learn how sex & gender minorities have contributed to the history of the USA, proclaims that he approves only so long as things begin with two cities that do not exist and, if they did exist, ceased to exist many centuries before the USA did?

Riiiiiiiight.
caseloweraz

I wonder if he’ll include the part where “colonial vipers are attacking Gommorah — and bombing the pojees out of it!”

(g,d&r…)
howardhershey

Interesting who Jews, Christians, and Muslims regard as a “righteous” man. I hear that his daughters got him drunk and raped him in order to get pregnant. Makes me understand better why he pimped them to the townsfolk to keep the townsmen from gang raping some ‘angels’. Gen. 19:30-36. The Bible is such a great source for finding out who is and who isn’t ‘righteous’.

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Fischer: Teach Sodom and Gomorrah as Gay History