Cognitive dissonance, thy name is Leviticus.
Religious nutbags across the country are getting more and more desperate when it comes to slapping homosexuals upside the head with the Bible.
Fighting against a tide of equality, these people are determined to inflict their bastardized version of Christianity on all of us — including our children.1 And if that means sanctioning the physical assault of young people, then goddammit, that’s what they’re gonna do.
Eclectablog’s post on the anti-bullying bill which the Michigan Senate passed last week lays out just how vile and abhorrent this new trend is. Essentially, wingnut Michiganders carved out an exception from an anti-bullying bill named after Matt Epling, a young man who committed suicide after being assaulted for being gay by students at his high school. The exception permits students to cite a religious or moral conviction as an excuse for their bullying behavior.
The exception reads:
“This section does not prohibit a statement of a sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction of a school employee, school volunteer, pupil, or a pupil and parent or guardian.”
Setting aside that the phrase “sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction” is so vague as to be entirely meaningless, the notion that elected representatives — and not just in Michigan — are legislatively sanctioning gay-bashing is appalling.
In West Virginia, for example, conservative groups are criticizing a proposed school policy which would protect LGBT students from student bullying and harassment. Their claim? Freedumb of speech, of course:
Groups like the Family Policy Council of West Virginia have lambasted the policy for threatening religious freedom and free speech, while civil rights groups say the rule will finally give LGBT students much-needed help.
Jeremy Dys, president of the Family Policy Council, told State Board of Education members Wednesday that anti-bullying laws that target homosexuality can take schools down a slippery slope.
But the president of the state school board said Dys doesn’t understand the policy.
“If a student makes a comment in opposition to homosexuality and what Scripture teaches about homosexuality, they could be in violation of the proposed bullying policy,” said Dys. “Bullying policies need to make sure they apply categorically across the board, but in reality, we have an infringement upon religious liberty.”
He said a policy should be based on the bullying action, not the characteristics of the person being victimized.
Got it? Religious assholes have a god-given right to be bash gays. IT’S IN THE KONSTATOOSHUN.
John Cole nails it:
These freaks think they sound like good Christians, just wanting to preach the Lord’s work, but to everyone outside their bubble, they look just like the Fred Phelps hate parade. I mean, really- you’re worried about the state infringing upon your “right” to tell teenage kids that “God Hates Fags?”
Fucking sociopaths.
Sociopaths indeed.
Also? Really fucking stupid. If you’re going to love the Bible, then you should really get up in there and love the Bible. ::eyebrow waggle::
Jokes aside, if you don’t follow the Bible’s “‘teachings” to the letter, but rather pick and choose the portions your favorite bits, then you’re a hypocrite. And if your favorite bits include DEATH TO FAGZ!, then you’re nothing more than a homophobic asshole who hates people because some book — not all of which you even pay attention to — tells you to.
It’s not Christian. Not even a little. In fact, it’s exactly idiotic, as Stephen Colbert aptly demonstrated last night:
| The Colbert Report | Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| The Word – Bully Pulpit | ||||
|
||||
Also, too, this:
You’re welcome.
1 Well, not my children. I don’t have any children… that I know of.
[cross-posted at Angry Black Lady Chronicles](edited to correct Colbert video)
John X.
So a Muslim kid who beats up the child of a soldier because he believes in jihad is not breaking the law? Good to know.
j
It’s funny. They all call themselves “Christians” but always fall back on the Old Testament.
It would be more correct to refer to them as “Leviticans”. Jesus didn’t show up until the New Testament.
Mark S.
@j:
I’m surprised they haven’t eased Jesus out yet. He wasn’t very pro-Job Creator.
Judas Escargot
@John X.:
The common meme, meant in jest I know… but it’s funny/stupid how these folks assume that they will always be the majority-group for all time, and never in need of protections like these themselves one day.
If you seriously believe that your grandkids are going to be outnumbered by Spanish-speaking Soshilist Muslims or whatever (as these idiots seem to), then shouldn’t you be pushing for more protections for those future grandkids?
TooManyJens
It looks like the language might be changed:
David in NY
There’s a legal angle here that perhaps should be pressed. That is, many acts that would be legal become illegal due to the intent of the actor. In this case, even expressing your firmly held religous beliefs should be punishable if done with the intent to harass, annoy, threaten or alarm another person. See, NY statutes on harassment.
That’s the response to the “First Amendment” claim. There is no First Amendment right to intentionally cause distress to another person. That is well settled.
Thus, the statute should be amended to read ““This section does not prohibit a statement of a sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction of a school employee, school volunteer, pupil, or a pupil and parent or guardian, unless the statement is made with the intent to harass, annoy, threaten or alarm another person.” Leaving out this last portion neuters the entire statute.
Steve
No one is arguing that it should be legal to beat anyone up. They’re just imagining some scenario where a good little Christian kid raises his hand and says, “You know, I believe homosexuality is morally wrong,” and then some gay kid complains that he feels bullied by that opinion and the armies of political correctness swoop in and carry the first kid away. Remember, these are the same people who think there’s a War on Christmas.
PeakVT
@j: I’ve used the phrase “Old Testament Christians” but I like Leviticans better.
WereBear
When I get annoyed by god-bothers, I push them to the wall with this, asking them the last time they sacrificed a goat.
MikeJ
@David in NY: Yeah, I think you’ve nailed it, except I’d probably go farther. Being an asshole shouldn’t be against the law, and bullying isn’t a one time thing. There’s a difference between harassment to the point where it harms the learning environment and somebody just acting like a dick.
Of course schools shouldn’t need laws to stop kids from being assholes. Teachers should be able to tell any kid that acts like an asshole to stop or they’ll be in detention forever.
David in NY
@David in NY: Well, to respond to myself, the statute already contains a stringent intent element defining “Bullying” as something
“that is intended or that a reasonable person would know is likely to harm 1 or more pupils either directly or indirectly by doing any of the following:
(i) Substantially interfering with educational opportunities, benefits, or programs of 1 or more pupils.
(ii) Substantially and adversely affecting the ability of a pupil to participate in or benefit from the school district’s or public school’s educational programs or activities by placing the pupil in reasonable fear of physical harm.
(iii) Having an actual and substantial detrimental effect on a pupil’s physical or mental health or causing substantial emotional distress.
(iv) Causing substantial disruption in, or substantial
interference with, the orderly operation of the school.
ETA: really adopting MikeJ’s approach, actually.
Xecky Gilchrist
@David in NY: In this case, even expressing your firmly held religous beliefs should be punishable if done with the intent to harass, annoy, threaten or alarm another person.
Like that idjit who challenged a bunch of people on the subway by belligerently yelling “Merry Christmas!” (and proving his hostile intent by beating up the guy who responded “Happy Hanukkah!”?)
ItinerantPedant
Hey ABL, what is it with you and handing me the opportunity to blog pimp John Scalzi? Again apologies for the inability to embed a link from my iPhone: http://scalzi.com/whatever/002675.html.
Roger Moore
I’m pretty sure the Christians who believe this stuff would quote St. Paul at length. He basically claimed that Christian converts didn’t have to obey all the hard parts of the Torah because they weren’t Jewish and besides, the Jews had never succeeded in obeying completely. You may not like that, but there’s two millennia of Christian tradition backed up by scriptural authority saying you can ignore the dietary, clothing, and other nitpicky restrictions of Leviticus and Deuteronomy.
j
@Steve: If it happens in a public school, the religion argument can go to hell.
sukabi
ABL, the Colbert video I’m seeing is for Americone Dream supremacy not the anti-bullying thing…
Joel
Unfortunately, you linked to the wrong bit. Here’s the relevant one. That Colbert Report bit was really good. When he’s on, Colbert can be truly profound. He makes the key point at 4:50 in the clip, but the whole thing is worthwhile. Another great example of Colbert at his best.
Steve
@j: Hmm, you don’t have the right to express your religious beliefs in a public school? The Constitution disagrees with you.
gbear
You’ve got it backwards-
It’s not that they hate people because the book tells them to, it’s that they use the book to find justification for the hate they already feel.
David in NY
@Xecky Gilchrist: Yeah, like him. The intent to, as the statute says, “caus[e] substantial emotional distress” is enough. (Heck, in New York, just intending to annoy is enough, though not often prosecuted.)
ABL
@David in NY: that’s a magnificent point.
ABL
@Joel: thanks and fix’d.
David Hunt
@Mark S.:
I think the problem is that JC owns the trademark on Christianity and they don’t have the resources or marketing savvy to develop their own successful brand. They’re stuck with trying to alter the actual product to fit their needs without damaging their market dominance. Conservapedia’s project of “correcting the translation” of the Bible so that it’s in line with Conservative, free-market ideas is one ham-handed attempt.
David in NY
@ABL: Thank you. This is the reasonable response — you can state you religious feelings all you want, but if you’re trying to cause someone emotional distress by doing so, you’re over the line. Over the line both of your religion and the law, I would say, but I’m no expert on “Christianity” of this sort.
Barry
@Judas Escargot: “The common meme, meant in jest I know… but it’s funny/stupid how these folks assume that they will always be the majority-group for all time, and never in need of protections like these themselves one day.”
The majority of such proposals by them do assume that they’ll at least have the *clout* for a long time.
aimai
@Steve:
They are arguing that it should be legal to shout “God hates fags” over and over again, or even to whisper it, as a gay kid passess by. That’s just as bad as an outright physical attack, in the context of a total institution like a school.
aimai
Barry
@Roger Moore: “You may not like that, but there’s two millennia of Christian tradition backed up by scriptural authority saying you can ignore the dietary, clothing, and other nitpicky restrictions of Leviticus and Deuteronomy.”
In which case they should stop quoting the Old Testament.
Also, there’s two millennia of Christian tradition of invoking the Old Testament whenever convenient/sincerely thought applicable.
peach flavored shampoo
Michigan’s just trying to advance the Heterosexual Agenda.
David in NY
@Judas Escargot:
Sir Thomas More (at least the fictional one in A Man for All Seasons) made the case best:
William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!
Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
William Roper: Yes, I’d cut down every law in England to do that!
Sir Thomas More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!
Reality Check
Christians believe in the moral law of the Old Testament but don’t follow the judicial laws (which includes dietary restrictions etc.) so you’re not going to get that far bringing it up.
Roger Moore
@Steve:
That’s how they want to sell it, at least. I’m pretty sure their real intent is to make sure that it’s still legal to bully gays (and anyone else on the approved hate list) as long a you’re couching the bullying in religious terms.
Mouse Tolliver
The problem with that clause is that bigotry itself is a strongly held moral conviction that’s usually rooted in religious belief. So I guess if you sincerely believe that Jews are Christ killers, it would be okay to beat up the Jewish kid. Or if you sincerely believe that God intended people of different races should remain separate, you could pick on the black girl. Man, these people suck at being people.
Reality Check
Also homosexual sex acts are condemned in the New Testament as well (polygamy and divorce are too, hilariously, since the OT endorses both!)
Villago Delenda Est
@Roger Moore:
But…but…the Bible is the literal, inerrant word of God himself!
How can any part of it, for any reason, be disregarded because some Pauly-come-lately says it’s “too Jewish”?
If you can toss aside the “don’t eat lobster, no can haz bacon cheezeburgers” part, because Paul said so, then why can’t we toss aside the entire “lie with a man as a woman” part?
Oh, wait…I forgot. Paul was really not into sex with anyone at all. “Doing your duty for the Party” was about as far as he’d go.
RossinDetroit
I’m in a MI high school right now. This relatively wealthy and progressive district tolerates zero bullying. When cases come up they’re high profile and lots of parents get involved. It’s a colossal headache for administrators. If the MI law passed as written it would become a nightmare.
Wag
j
@Steve: See Post 8.
Nobody has any “right” to proselytize in a public school. If the little punk wants to do it his parents should pony up the bucks and send him to a religious reeducation camp (aka “parochial school).
Or better yet, expel the little bully and send his “tough” ass to juvie detention where someone else much bigger will have HIM screaming for Jesus within the first week.
David in NY
@RossinDetroit: Your school is probably in compliance with most of the law right now. Have you checked it out? It mostly requires the establishment of policies so bullying is no longer just ignored, when it is encountered. The State Senate had no problem with anything other than the religious exemption, apparently.
http://www.legislature.mi.gov/documents/2011-2012/billengrossed/Senate/htm/2011-SEBS-0137.htm
j
@David Hunt: I think it was H.L. Mencken who wrote:
Most people use religion like a drunk uses a lamp post; for support, rather than enlightenment.
feebog
I linked to Electablog’s post and here is what gobsmaked me:
The Michican State Sentate is more than two to one Republicans over Democrats? WTF? How does a Mid-West swing state have a Senate that is so lop-sided? Boggles the mind.
David in NY
Can folks also stop overstating the extent of the religious exemption? It doesn’t excuse beating a kid up. It states only that the “section does not prohibit a statement” of religious belief. I think even that’s wrong (if the statement is made with an intent to harm, or that knowledge that harm will probably occur). But it’s just incorrect to say that it excuses physical bullying.
Overstatement of the problem does not advance our position; in fact it makes it vulnerable to the likes of Reality Check (who, if he had half a brain, would have twitted us about this exaggeration already).
Steve
@j: I read post 8. You apparently didn’t. You certainly can’t be kicked out of public school merely for making a statement of religious belief. Even the test that it has to be “done with the intent to harass, annoy, threaten or alarm another person,” which is the general standard here in New York, isn’t enough to satisfy the First Amendment if you take it literally.
You don’t have a First Amendment right to bully anyone, but the government can’t punish you for speech just because someone finds it “annoying.”
Dave
I have yet to see the part of the Bible that actually commands people to hate homosexuals. So you basically have a bunch of assholes using religion as cover for their own jackassery. THAT’S what I find offensive.
RossinDetroit
@David in NY:
They have strong policies in force that meet the proposed law except for the ‘moral or religious’ aspect. The hassles that would come about from trying to sort ‘moral’ bullying from the regular immoral kind would be impossible to resolve.
The purpose of this moral exemption to the law may be to burden schools so heavily trying to decide what’s allowable and what’s hate speech that they give up and turn a blind eye to it all.
j
@Steve: Really? Ask the people who were subjected to arrest by Bush’s
loyalty goon squads. Or heh ones pushed into “free speech zones” 1 mile from wherever Bush was going to be.
scav
Oddly enough, marriage doesn’t even have the full 2K of consistent treatment in Christianity. They had concepts of what was licit or not, but basically relied on civil marriage for a good long time (actually preferring people stayed virginal or at least celibate, especially when they really thought the end-times were coming). Things changed gradually. Essential bits of the ceremony were held outside the church as late as the 10th C (forget ship captains, fathers could do it at times and even at home). Priests took over more consistently and completely around the 13th C. It’s been in and out of the sacrament or no-sacrament camp depending on time and creed. But, ignore all those changes and innovation in the God-Botherer past and adopt their most restrictive camps’ spiritual convictions now as the absolute inviolate truth unless you wish to endanger civilization as we know it! Religious justification is a flexible tool: just don’t mention it.
KenZ
http://godhatesshrimp.com/
’nuff said!
RossinDetroit
@feebog:
Northern MI is largely rural and red. The west coast is also very Republican and superconservative. It’s not all Detroit.
Insomniac
Nice one, ABL! Also, love that clip from The West Wing – one of my favorites.
Davis X. Machina
Self-delete.
Davis X. Machina
@j: Hey, parochial school — specifically the CSJ’s (thank you, Sister Mary Olive) and the Jesuits — is what made me the equality-obsessed, fag-loving, rootless cosmopolite and socia1ist weenie I am today.
I didn’t hear about Dorothy Day and Michael Harrington and Dom Hélder-Câmara from the pulpit — I heard about them from my teachers.
Snowball
@Dave:
It also says “those without sin throw the first stone”…It is like these folks have never seen a bible before.
Frankensteinbeck
@j:
They’re not Leviticans either. The thing about gay sex is pretty much the only line in Leviticus they care about. Until they create temple slave institutions and obey the Kosherate laws, they ain’t Leviticans.
They’re Paulites. They follow Romans, and specifically its lengthy declarations that there are Good People and Bad People and you can identify Good People because they believe in Christ, and there are no in-betweens, only people sliding rapidly in one direction or the other. Also, Paul was big into ascetic morality.
Monala
@Reality Check: Ah. So stoning children for dishonoring their parents should still be allowable, since that’s a moral rather than judicial law?
And FYI, Christians, of which I am one, includes a broad group of people. We don’t all interpret the Bible the same way.
No One of Consequence
Don’t Pray in my School and I promise not to Think in your Church…
– NOoC
scav
@No One of Consequence:
Preach the Controversy.
David in NY
@RossinDetroit: I see, you mean adding the religious exemption would complicate things. Maybe so.
But it is necessary to note that the exemption excuses only a “statement,” nothing more. Separating out only those cases that involve a religious statement would not be so difficult, I would think. Most serious cases will involved something other than a statement or a statement that is something other than religious.
Quaker in a Basement
I will not be deterred from denouncing nonbelievers who partake of the body of the FSM.
Reality Check
@Monala no, moron, stoning is a judicial punishment not a moral precept.
Gex
@MikeJ: Many of the teachers and administrators hold anti-gay views too. That’s why you are seeing “It Gets Better” and anti-bullying laws. So there’s some recourse for the bullied outside the school system.
Gex
@Roger Moore: That’s a fair assumption. If you look at the anti-SSM amendments, they all specifically prevent the state from recognizing anything “like”marriage. And now they complain gays won’t settle for civil unions. Well, no, not after they made them meaningless.
But that just shows that “protecting marriage” was really about marginalizing gays. There’s no reason to suspect that this plea for “protection” is anything other than an offensive move as well.
PurpleGirl
@ItinerantPedant: Pimping an essay by John Scalzi is a good thing to do anytime. I especially like his writings on growing up poor.
Urza
Both those clips, and the linked West Wing clips after ARE the campaign commercials. Short, easy to understand, and almost all the info anyone could need. Follow it up with clips from the republican debates and just put up “You really want these schmucks?”
Ben Cisco
OT, but Faux Snooze has apparently kicked John “Worst” Kasich to the curb, chryonically: http://yfrog.com/kkpvdp
vhh
The Muslim men who flew planes into buildings in NYC did so in accordance with their religious beliefs, shouting Allahu Akbar as they incinerated themselves and some 3000 Americans. This of course is just fine in the philosophy of the yahoos who are keen to bully gays in the Lord’s name.
Gex
Listen, people. If we don’t bully gay people sufficiently, powerful white guys will rape boys. We don’t want that happening, do we? Think of the children!
Roger Moore
@Barry:
Why? The whole point is that the critical parts of the Torah still apply. St. Paul never suggested you can ignore the 10 Commandments, or, IIRC, any of the stuff about protecting widows and orphans. He was trying to wipe away the petty legalistic tradition where people worry about whether they need two sets of dishes or have to carry a folding stool to sit on in public.
The problem as I see it is that nobody ever nailed down exactly which parts of the Old Testament are critical and which parts are petty legalism, or if they did they didn’t formally incorporate those decisions into scripture. You can get away with that if you have a nice set of Canon Law or a Talmud or something else that’s accepted as a non-scriptural authority. But once you knock down all non-Biblical authority but have a Bible that says vaguely that some of the old parts don’t matter anymore, there’s a free-for-all. It gives people license to be cafeteria fundamentalists who accept the parts of the Torah they like and ignore the parts they find inconvenient.
Villago Delenda Est
@vhh:
This is easy to dismiss, as they are followers of a “false religion”, therefore the rules for us do not apply to them.
gelfling545
@Roger Moore: ergo they may equally ignore the one in re homosexuality, no?
Katie5
@WereBear and following along the same lines as @Roger Moore: It’s frustrating but you’re doing a literal reading of the Bible. That is, you’re literally reading the Bible. That’s using the wrong epistemology. In their epistemology, literal means important people telling lesser important people which parts are important. That’s how the truth is known. Your telling them to sacrifice a goat is outside their way of knowing the truth so they’re just as likely to respond with, “Of course, that’s what a liberal would say.”
Karen
Before I go on any farther, I admit I’m Jewish not Christian so if my information is wrong, then please, let me know.
But it seems like these Phelpian Christians in the AFA and other UberChristian groups like them have taken the G-d of the Old Testament, who is judgmental and vindictive (sends plagues of frogs and locusts, drowns the world but lets Noah know so he could save pairs of animals, etc.)and have called him Jesus, completely skipping over the merciful and loving Jesus who cares about the poor and the weak and forgives sins.
Then they added Ayn Rand.
Old Testament G-d + Ayn Rand = Phelpian Jesus
Sad_Dem
Roger Moore: The problem as I see it is that nobody ever nailed down exactly which parts of the Old Testament are critical and which parts are petty legalism, or if they did they didn’t formally incorporate those decisions into scripture.
Must all male Christians be circumcised? Acts says no. The Old Testament is adamant, beyond all petty legalistic interpretation, that all Jewish men be circumcised. Therefore, Christians do not have to follow all the Jewish laws. But Jesus said that he had not come to change one jot or tittle of Mosaic law. What are good Christians to do? Think for themselves?
Mnemosyne
@Reality Check:
So stoning children to death for not honoring their parents is a judicial precept but stoning homosexuals to death is not a judicial precept because arglebargle Bible?
TooManyJens
@Ben Cisco: Oh, JESUS CHRIST.
Reality Check
@Mnemosyne
The way I was taught, and AFAIK mainstream Protestants and Catholics hold, that the stoning is a judicial punishment, the moral precepts behind both still stand however, since Jesus took the punishment in our places (according to Christians). So you should honor your parents, and not engage in homosexual sex, but the Old Covenant punishments for them no longer stand.
Mnemosyne
@Roger Moore:
Argh. Google has failed me, but Fred Clark at Slacktivist once did a great post explaining that when St. Paul (or Peter?) had his vision of a table full of shellfish, the food is very clearly linked within the story with the person who had just knocked on his door, who was an “unclean” Gentile (and Roman centurion).
Only the most literal reading of the story can lead one to assume it’s only about the dietary restrictions and not making the point that there’s no such thing as an unclean person in Jesus’ eyes, but today’s fundies are all about “literal” readings that make no actual sense.
Reality Check
Im really the wrong person to defend this since Im an atheist but you should at least attack Christians for what they actually believe, not say idiotic stuff like LOOK IT SAYS HERE TO STONE CHILDREN WHY AREN’T YOU DOING THAT?? or WHY DO YOU STILL EAT SHELLFISH THEN HUH?? HUH?? That stuff is the atheist equivalent of the young earth creationist asking why chimps aren’t turning into humans.
Mnemosyne
@Reality Check:
So therefore the reason that homosexuals should be punished under secular law but children who don’t honor their parents are not punished under secular law is, what, exactly?
Mnemosyne
@Reality Check:
They claim to actually believe that Leviticus says that homosexuals should be punished and therefore gay people shouldn’t get any civil rights. So we’re supposed to accept at face value that the only law in Leviticus that’s supposed to still be followed is the one against homosexuality and everything else has been discarded because they say so?
Reality Check
What Christian group aside from Fred Phelps wants homosexuals to be stoned? Or even for homosexual acts to be illegal again?
Villago Delenda Est
@Reality Check:
What Christians actually believe is about as hard to pin down as what Muslims actually believe.
Roman Catholics? Sunnis? Shiites? Baptists? Lutherans? Methodists? Eastern Orthodox? Mormons? Pentecostals? Jehovah’s Witnesses? Baha’i?
Let’s not even go into the Emo Philips routine on who’s a heretic and who’s not.
Villago Delenda Est
@Karen:
That’s a pretty good summation of the modern “Christian” belief system, one that rather ignores all that “liberal” stuff that Jesus was so into. Love thy neighbor, turn the other cheek, pray in the closet, the rich suck, etc.
Mnemosyne
@Reality Check:
These three American evangelicals helped Uganda write their “death to homos” law. But I’m sure you’re right that they’re just joshin’ and don’t think we should have similar laws here in the US. No sirree.
Richard
Quite frankly, at this point, I’m surprised that some asshole in some ultra-red state hasn’t proposed a law declaring the murder of homosexuals “justifiable homicide”.
In that regard, earlier this year in Iowa, language was inserted into anti-abortion legislation that basically would have made it legal to assassinate abortion doctors. Fortunately, those bills didn’t pass, as I recall, at least not in that form.
Snowball
@Villago Delenda Est:
Don’t forget “thou shalt not kill” which apparently has been erased in some bibles.
Ecks
I get the difference between moral precepts (“it’s bad!”) being retained and the legalistic part (“so kill them!”) being
retainedditched. But even so, there seems to be some amount of pickiness about which moral precepts are retained. There’s no sense that eating shellfish, like lying with another man, is, y’know, bad, an abomination even, even if nobody should go to jail over it.(amusing side note: The bible lists all the bad combinations for sex: man on man, father and kid, etc… but none of them list any form of woman-on-woman sex as bad. I think it just wasn’t even seen as an option by the writers that a woman would be into that sort of thing. So from a literal literalist POV (i.e., not the fundy one), lesbian sex is in the clear, even if it’s mother-on-daughter).
(side side note, apparently even with the sections that forbid man-on-man, there’s some uncertainty about the translation, because they don’t use the normal word for “male”. Some scholars think it’s actually a prohibition against sleeping with male temple prostitutes, so it’s not about gay seks, it’s about not mucking about with heretical religious groups).
Villago Delenda Est
@Ecks:
I read somewhere, and there’s no documentation I can point to in support of it, that in 19th century Britain male homosexuality was explicitly illegal, but female homosexuality was not, because Queen Victoria simply couldn’t believe there was such a thing as female homosexuality.
(On the side notes: translations really can make things difficult, can’t they?)
Julia Grey
Important: It was 3000 PEOPLE. Not all of them were American.
Ecks
@Villago Delenda Est: My spouse is a victorianist. You got lesbians openly living together and nobody would so much as blink. They assumed that women just weren’t that interested in sex, so if two of them were living together, they must just be spinsters who’d just so happened never to have found the right dudes to marry (or been in the right position to marry someone – man was the marriage business complicated back then).
Julia Grey
Romans 1:26:
AA+ Bonds
– _ –
Phoenician in a time of Romans
@Mouse Tolliver:
So I guess if you sincerely believe that Jews are Christ killers, it would be okay to beat up the Jewish kid
No, it’s limited to “statements”. It’s written for the Eric Cartmans of the world.
jonas
@Joel: It’s interesting to note that Colbert himself happens to be a devout Catholic. I think it really gets his goat when Christianity is dragged through the mud by its alleged adherents, for example when they claim legal right to harass queer people.
David in NY
@Ecks: Hell, that was still the “belief” in my schools in the ’50’s and ’60’s. That is the 1950’s and 1960’s.
Epicurus
Looks like the Michigan House has some sane members…they passed a version of the bill without the “conscience” language…
http://www.freep.com/article/20111110/NEWS15/111110056/Michigan-House-OKs-anti-bullying-bill-without-ifs-buts?odyssey=nav|head
Xenos
@Ecks: Meanwhile in France, homosexuality was decriminalized in the course of the French Revolution. Even then, it had been decades since the most recent prosecution for sodomy.
madd profit
You want to hear about an even more odd religious exception? Oregon has one in its criminal law against strangulation for “good faith practices of a religious belief.” I don’t know the background on this but it was mentioned on the hijackedsignal blog: http://www.hijackedsignal.com/?p=606
Too Many Jimpersons (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.)
I hate these people.