A Proclivity to Selectively Read in Religion

I just watched an excellent documentary entitled “For The Bible Tells Me So” which dealt with how conservative Christian groups utilize the Bible for their own personal social agendas, mainly justifying homophobia and the denial of equitable civil rights to the GLBT community. I definitely would recommend to all who stumble upon this to go and watch it whenever they get the chance.

The main points which I have gleaned from the film are as follows:

• The Bible needs to be read in the historical and social context in which the many different writers wrote it. The Bible is most likely NOT a singular work by Moses but rather the end result of centuries of alterations and editing. The King James Bible dates from only a few centuries ago. If one looks closely into the Bible’s writing, one can easily discern different “sources” from the material originates. Simply put, that means that different authors wrote different sections of the Bible. That should be a “DUH” for most of you.
• The New Testament is supposed to have overtaken the Old Testament as the leading authority on religious law. The following of the New Testament with the acceptance of the existence of the Old Testament is what differentiates Christians from Jews. The New Testament is to be followed, so to follow the Old Testament would almost be like disrespecting Jesus’ words himself.
• And while we’re at it, many people engage in selective reading without really considering the fact that the book Leviticus, which condemns homosexuality as an “abomination” also condemns those who consume shellfish or plant seeds from two different crops in the same field. In addition, the word “abomination” didn’t have exactly the same connotation as it does today. It meant it was something against the culture, against tradition, not against God per se. Think about it. For a nation that needed to propagate, homosexuals would detract from the reproductive success the community could have as a whole. It wasn’t so much that God would curse though who practiced homosexuality but rather the human editors of the scripture edited it respectively to help maintain that their community be able to proliferate throughout the land. Homosexuality as the concept we know today did not exist back then as a comparable term does not appear in the Aramaic, Hebrew, or Greek languages. Homosexuality could not possibly attempt to “ruin the sanctity of marriage” when men commonly had as many wives as they did so desire.
• The rhetoric employed by those highest up in the Christian churches has an extremely detrimental effect on those “in the closet” attendees who soak up that hatred and let it fester inside of them consequently leading to “the closet” being where they attempt to, and sometimes succeed in, taking their own lives. The numerous psychological and physiological organizations have denounced the view of homosexuality as a disorder (which nowadays is so scarce a view that its importance is almost negligible … almost) and therefore the programs to eradicate homosexuals’ behavior utilizing psychological tools (I view it as a warfare) are also of little scientific import.
• Furthermore, the notion of homosexuality being a choice an especially outdated one with modern studies obviously showing a genetic tendency towards human sexual orientation. Screw tendency, let’s go for “existence.” My favorite piece of evidence is that studies have shown that with identical twins separated by birth and who lived in totally disparate households, if one is gay, then there is an extremely high likelihood of the other being so, as well. Another piece of evidence which I had never heard of also intrigued me. Studies have found that in successions of boys birthed by the same mother that the youngest one has a higher likelihood of being gay. This is because to the mother’s body, a male fetus is viewed almost as a foreign object. Through each successive birth, the mother’s antibodies become more successful in, say, “attacking” the fetus with estrogen. The last boy obviously would receive the most estrogen.
• Also, one final note: Many contra-homosexuality believers use the example of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah to demonstrate their point in that God destroyed the cities for their homosexual comportment. Actually, it was due to the inhospitality perpetrated by the cities’ residents that angered God. The residents went against theoretical doctrine because they were scared of outsiders; the cities had become wealthy and the inhabitants feared that to welcome any stranger passing through with open arms would invite them to steal from them. Lot and his family accepted wanderers into their house which the townspeople did not appreciate and ordered out, with some of the men vowing to anally rape them as a form of humiliation. Lot and his family were saved because of their hospitality while the cities were destroyed because of the lack thereof.

In summary, this documentary really helped synthesize a lot of information for me in regards to the Judeo-Christian stance on homosexuality. Context is especially important in trying to understand religious scripture, just like with our nation’s Constitution. Time changes certain sociological ideas. Religious scripture was a way to provide some control over the masses for the elite. For a fledgling nation to enjoy success in growing its members, there needed to be some guidelines which everyone had to follow. Obviously, for practical reasons some were heeded more diligently than others. Homosexuality stood out because, yes, biologically speaking, it’s an unnatural phenomenon, but also because it didn’t help the early peoples people populate themselves.