Don’t Blame the Bible for Your Bad Views on Homosexuality

Matthew Vines is an undergrad at Harvard. He’s also gay, and he’s a Christian. He’s taking some time off of school right now to fight marriage amendments, like the one in my state, Minnesota.

He gave a talk in Wichita a couple weeks ago — you can see it above. He’s articulate, smart, and the video is worth 67 minutes of your time. Here’s what Leonard Pitts said about the video in the Miami Herald:

Vines’ speech is a masterwork of scriptural exegesis and a marvel of patient logic, slicing and dicing with surgical precision the claim that homophobia is God ordained. So effective is the video that after viewing it, Sandra Delemares a Christian blogger from the United Kingdom who had, for years, spoken in staunch opposition to same sex marriage, wrote that it “revolutionised” her thinking.

Vines points out, for instance, that the frequently quoted condemnation (homosexuality is an “abomination”) from the Old Testament lawbook of Leviticus has no application to Christians, who are bound by the teachings of the New Testament. He explains that St. Paul’s admonitions about the “effeminate” and “abusers of themselves with mankind” stem from modern mis-translations of ancient Greek terminology.

Find Matthew here:
— Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/VinesMatthew
— Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/matthew.vines
— Tumblr: http://matthewvines.tumblr.com
— YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/VinesMatthew