Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by David Philip Norris on April 23, 2012 at 7:46am

David Sedaris describes this phenomena perfectly in Naked, in the essay "I Like Guys":

"We had long ago identified one another and understood that because of everything we had in common, we could never be friends. To socialize would have drawn too much attention to ourselves. We were members of a secret society founded on self-loathing. When a teacher or classmate made fun of a real homosexual, I made certain my laugh was louder than anyone else's. When a club member's clothing was thrown into the locker-room toilet, I was always the first to cheer. When it was my clothing, I watched as the faces of my fellows broke into recognizable expressions of relief. Faggots, I thought. This should have been you."

The ones who yell the loudest are the ones with the most to hide, and it's the ones who are working the hardest to stay at the forefront of the anti-gay movement who are the most bitter, the most shrill, because they are can't stand the fact that others are living the lives they wish they had the courage to live. The most bitter of all are the religious types.

Permalink Reply by Sentient Biped on April 23, 2012 at 9:12am

Maggie Gallager is gay?  When that gets out, the entire world of gaydom will turn ex-gay.  Way to go Vogoness!

Permalink Reply by Loren Miller on April 23, 2012 at 8:00am

EPIPHANY!!!

You realize what this means, don't you? The author of Leviticus was A Repressed Homosexual! I mean, he's so hung up about it, he mentions it TWICE: 18:22 and 20:13!

How fucked up is THAT?!?

Permalink Reply by David Philip Norris on April 23, 2012 at 8:20am

Paul was probably way more of a homo. Depending on if you believe he wrote all of the epistles attributed to him, he mentions it three different books! But of the 858 verses in Leviticus, two (count 'em, two) deal with homosexuality. That's 2%!!

The context of Leviticus 18 is prohibitions on pagan worship, which often included acts of incest (father/daughter, mother/son, brother/sister) as well as homosexual. The previous chapter (17) deals with appropriate places of sacrifice and not eating blood (which was also part of Ancient Near East rituals). The following chapter (19) goes into further detail with the following:

"You shall not eat any flesh with the blood in it. You shall not interpret omens or tell fortunes. You shall not round off the hair on your temples or mar the edges of your beard. You shall not make any cuts on your body for the dead or tattoo yourselves: I am the Lord." (19:26-28)

Christians are pretty selective in which prohibitions they think god still cares about, but from the context it's pretty clear what the writer of Leviticus was talking about. And of the 31,173 total verses in the bible, only eight supposedly condemn gays. It's absurd.

Plus, you have the centurion's servant in Matthew 8/Luke 7, which is obviously dealing with a gay couple (and Jesus would've known it); and the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8.

Permalink Reply by Sentient Biped on April 23, 2012 at 9:19am

Nothing like a bible scholar to smack down the bigots!  You rock! 

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I always wondered about the rounding off the hair of the temples and the edges of the beard marring.  I'm pretty sure they didn't obey that one in the Bible Baptist church I grew up in.  Then again, they were pretty active in the adultery and fornication departments too. 

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But at least they felt secure in condoming the sodomites and gomorrahans.  (I know what sodomites do.  What do gomorrahans do?  Serve lime jello at picnics?)  One verse they could be sure about not screwing up!  A safety zone!  Or...  in their hearts, they're between the sheets with Vin Diesel?  Oh the horror!

Permalink Reply by Joan Denoo on April 23, 2012 at 9:51am

It just makes sense!