Comment

Comment by James M. Martin on June 25, 2012 at 5:36pm

Most evangelical fundamentalists know nothing of history and not too much about the very book that they fall back on as moral justification for their bigotry, and in some cases, hypocrisy, when it comes to the social issues in general and sexual orientation and gender rights in particular.  Just one example of many, vis-a-vis Sodom (from whence they take the term "sodomite"): they know nothing of geological science and findings that the area now thought to be Sodom stood on a big pocket of mephitic gasses such that an earthquake, even if small, would ignite and explode, thereby destroying that City of the Plain.  It is also generally accepted in historical circles that the sin of the Sodomites was not homosexuality but inhospitality: they were xenophobic, not homophotic.  (As you know, the desert warlord tribes tended to be nomadic, and it was considered an affront to God that a person would not greet such a traveler with an offer of bed, board, and your wife.  The Sodomites were procrustean is all.) The illogicality of the fundamentalists' homophobic, misogynistic beliefs is unknown to them, too, as they somehow manage to ignore the fact that after Lot left Sodom and saw his wife turn into a pillar of salt, he impregnated his own daughters.  I like to ask Christians, "Looks like God hates homos and loves father-daughter incest."  They have no explanation for the contradictions.

Comment by jay H on June 24, 2012 at 7:11pm

The modern 'romantic' marriage has indeed been around for only a short time. Historically marriage has had more to do with connecting families and controlling wealth and inheritance and very little to do with 'love'.