Protip: If you're using The Bible to justify your opposition to gay marriage, please don't forget to declare your disobedient, stubborn, and/or rebellious son a "drunkard and a glutton" and have him stoned to death for his behavior.
Deuteronomy 21:18-21
For the last couple months, I've been writing the occasional post - titled #Biblebuffet - indicating the hypocrisy of people who oppose same sex marriage for religious reasons.
If you use The Bible to oppose same sex marriage, don't forget to execute adulterers, people who work on Sundays, and any woman engaging in premarital sex. All of these edicts are stated in The Bible just as explicitly as opposition to same sex marriage, and oftentimes within the same book of the Bible.
I was going to write another post today, but instead, I just have a question:
Why is this argument not made more often?
When someone like Ted Cruz argues against same sex marriage on religious grounds, why don't his opponents ask him why he isn't also stoning those who work on Sunday?
Or at least attempting to reinstate the Blue laws, making it illegal to conduct business on Sunday?
This seems like a perfectly logical argument to make, but I never hear it. And as someone who has read The Bible from cover to cover three times, I assure you that I could continue to write #Biblebuffet posts for years without running out of bizarre edicts and inexplicable prohibitions contained within the text.
Why not highlight the hypocrisy of bigots who hide their bigotry behind a religious text filled with equally clear prohibitions that no sane person would ever follow?
Seriously, what am I missing?
I'm also stunned that no one brings up Jesus when it comes to same sex marriage, because a complete reading of the first four books of the New Testament - the section on Jesus's life on Earth - makes sit abundantly clear that he never treat homosexual men or women with the same hatred and prejudice as people like Ted Cruz do today.
The man who opposed so many things in the Old Testament by advising his followers to turn the other cheek and "love thy neighbor as yourself" (also stating that there is no commandment greater than this) would never support these bigots and their crusade against same sex marriage.
No one ever talks about this. They allow religious zealots to treat The Bible like a breakfast buffet, picking and choosing convenient sections while ignoring others in order to support their own bigotry without ever challenging this hypocrisy.
I want to know why. Seriously. What am I missing?
Protip: If you're using The Bible to justify your opposition to same sex marriage, don't forget to stone to death any woman engaging in premarital sex. And not just your garden-variety stoning, either. You must gather all the people of the town at the doorstep of the woman's father and kill her there.
God is very specific about this (Deuteronomy 22:20).
Side note:
If you are a man engaging in premarital sex, fear not. God does not condemn you to death. However, if you were engaged in premarital sex, it must logically be with either with a woman who was also engaging in premarital sex (meaning you must now stone her to death, which strikes me as awkward given the intimacy of your relationship) or with a married woman, at which point you and the married woman must both be killed.
So caution is advised.
Protip: If you're using The Bible to justify your opposition to gay marriage, don't forget to treat all adulterers EXACTLY the same way. God makes it abundantly clear that both are equally bad.
And if you're really being literal about your Biblical reading, please remember that you must execute anyone who has cheated on his or her spouse.
Happily, God didn't weigh in on the method of execution for this particular sin, so no need to gather stones or look up the meaning of the word "smite" in the dictionary. The method by which you murder every one of the adulterers in your life has been left to your own discretion.
Leviticus 20:10
