Each of these commentators also offers a far better understanding of the Bible than you’ll find in Billy Graham’s shameful, pandering advertisements. …
Leonard Pitts Jr.: “Don’t Blame the Bible“
Sometimes, people hide inside the Bible.
That is, they use the Christian holy book as authority and excuse for biases that have nothing to do with God. They did this when women sought to vote and when African Americans sought freedom.
They are doing it now, as gay men and lesbians seek the right to be married.
… Many in North Carolina — many around the country — are swimming against the tide of human freedom and blaming God for it. Again, this is not a new thing. We saw it back when God was for segregation and against women’s suffrage.
How convenient it must be to lay your own narrowness and smallness off on God, to accept no responsibility for the niggardly nature of your own soul.
… You don’t go to the Bible to hide. You go there to seek.
Jeffrey C. Pugh: “Who Amendment One is aimed at“
Most people who plan to vote for this amendment will do so out of religious convictions. Because of the way that they interpret the Bible they have arrived at a particular abhorrence about homosexuality that they don’t have about divorce, something Jesus addressed directly.
The supporters of this amendment have been told that the family is under attack and must be protected, but from where I sit the only family under attack is mine. From my lesbian aunt, who took her own life in the 1940s because societal pressure was so harsh, to my daughter, my loved ones are the ones who are under attack. People like my daughter are no different than you or I, save for their sexual orientation. They have the same hopes, fears and dreams that the rest of us have.
The people this amendment is aimed at work hard in their communities, seek to live their lives with integrity and hope they will be appreciated for their contributions to society. They are our children, our friends, our brothers and sisters, our parents, and they find it hard to understand why they are so hated, so vilified, that special oppression must be placed on them and their lives. I’m a bit mystified myself.
How is it that those who use the rhetoric of “freedom” so strongly are the same people who are eager to deny civil freedoms to others not like them? Or perhaps freedom belongs only to those who believe they are on the side of the righteous? If this is the case then “freedom” has acquired a very narrowly defined meaning.
My daughter and others like her wish they lived in a world where they weren’t so hated and feared, a world that didn’t work so hard to deny them the freedom to live their lives in peace. Unfortunately, they don’t live in that world; they live in one that restricts the meaning of families to relatively recent norms. If the supporters of the amendment really knew what families looked like in the Bible they would realize that family is a very fluid term, not as fixed as they think.
Alvin McEwen: “NC pastor created lies about gay sex because of his ‘religious views’“
Pastor Wooden of Upper Room Church of God in Christ in Raleigh, NC has been very vocal in his support of the amendment. In past interviews, he claimed that gays engage in so much anal sex that they have to wear diapers and also they use instruments such as cell phones as sexual aids: “I know of a case where in a hospital a homosexual male had a cellphone lodged in his anus and as they were operating on him the phone went off, the phone started ringing!”
… Wooden did not supply any evidence of his claim because there was none. Wooden admitted that the only reason he made the claim was to create an image of the gay community which is conducive to his religious beliefs that gays are immoral sinners.
In other words, Wooden lied. Deliberately and unashamedly.
Wooden was not interested in giving logical reasons why Amendment One should be passed. In fact, Wooden has never been interested in defending Amendment One through logic at all. He has only been interested in pushing Amendment One through any means, even if it meant demonizing the gay community through fear tactics and ugly stories of sex, diapers, and cell phones. And why did he do this? Because his religious beliefs dictated that homosexuality is a sin.
Where in the Bible does it say that Christians should lie in accordance to their beliefs?
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