Published 23:55, June the 11th, 2009
THE DEBATE AMONG YOU, OUR READERS
This June marks gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender pride month. And, like every other pride month, it’s a time to mark the long, hard road that gay Americans have traveled fighting for freedom and equal rights. But this month is different. The issue of gay marriage is burning brighter than ever after California upheld its ban on same-sex unions. This week, Metro writer Graham Wood takes a look at the debate from all sides. Today, we share with you a sampling of the flood of letters we received.
We didn’t show bias, but you certainly did
Dear readers,
So, we’ve done it to you again. Our gay marriage series this week has lit a fire under you, and we took all your punches.
This series was designed to do just that. The goal was to challenge your notions of both sides of the gay marriage debate and make you think about things you may not have considered before. We didn’t ask you to agree, just to think.
Two stories particularly grabbed your attention. The first was about a gay black man who is struggling to awaken the black community — which largely opposes gay marriage — to gay rights.
In his eyes, many African-Americans are being hypocritical by not supporting gay rights, considering their own background of oppression and prejudice.
We received buckets of letters saying Metro had no business equating the civil rights movement to the gay rights movement. So let’s be clear: Metro made no such argument. We brought you the story of a man who makes that argument. It’s up to you to decide whether you agree.
The second story that got you fired up was one featuring gay marriage opponents who say their stances don’t make them bigots. We brought you three people who voted for Proposition 8 in California but who also say they don’t think being gay is immoral, despite the way they voted.
Well, you just ripped us a new one. You told us that if we are willing to run such a story, we must be willing to run a story on backing slavery and the like. You said we were giving credence to hatemongers and that we ruined your gay pride month celebrations.
So, another point of clarification: For those who said we’re supporting “hatemongers” by printing a certain side of the debate, talk to your fellow readers who told us the opposite the day before.
More importantly, the opinions of the opponents are theirs, not Metro’s. We simply brought you the story, and let you decide for yourselves. By presenting both sides of the debate, we were bound to irk some readers one day, and others the next.
If the story ruined your good time, that’s your fault for letting it get to you that much.
“Too many Christians use the Bible as a drunk uses a lamppost — for support rather than illumination.”
The rejection and fear of homosexuals is wrong, and thinking Christians everywhere should condemn it in the same way that they should condemn sexism, racism and anti-Semitism.
Unfortunately, many think that the Bible gives them easy support for their prejudice against gays and lesbians. But as the late minister of Riverside Church, William Sloan Coffin, Jr., was fond of saying, too many Christians use the Bible as a drunk uses a lamppost — for support rather than for illumination.
Actually only seven texts — four in Hebrew Scripture and three in the New Testament — mention homosexual behavior. The most common text of reference is the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, commonly cited as justification for condemning homosexual relationships today. But this story does not apply. It refers to dehumanizing homosexual rape, not homosexual relationships, between two adults committed to each other in mutuality and love. Ironically, the Bible itself includes interpretation of the story that is completely void of condemning homosexuality. Instead, the guilt of Sodom is pride, greed and failure to aid the needy. (Ezekiel 16:49). Condemnation of same-sex relations also occurs in the New Testament, but again the historical and social context is different. In the Greco-Roman world, arranged erotic relationships between adult males and boys was common.
We should not compare the dehumanization of such arrangements with the reciprocal love shared between homosexual partners.
In short, biblical judgments against homosexual relations are not relevant to our modern debate. They carry wholly different social contexts than today’s debate about the validity of caring, mutual relationships between consenting adults. Historically, Christians have revised morally inadequate stances found in the Bible. We do not support slavery, ethnic cleansing or putting a rebellious son to death — all in the Bible.
It is time to stop misusing the Bible to support bigotry against homosexuals as if they are sinners.
Scripture does not create hostility against modern homosexuality. Rather, hostility against homosexuals prompts some Christians to find a text that seems to fit their prejudice and then lean on it like a drunk on a lamppost for support.