Day: May 6, 2012

First of all Let me say a few things right up front:

1) I rarely agree with Dan Savage

2) I often disagree with Joe of Joe.my.god

3) I’m not particularly religious

4) I rarely find enough compelling writing in Slate to continue reading more than a paragraph or two.

So you’ll understand that I took my blood pressure and temperature when I found myself reading an entire Slate article, agreeing with Dan Savage AND Joe about religion. I also checked to make sure that none of my neighbors had been raptured. Since I haven’t seen any Zombies walking around I’m going to assume that the zombie apocalypse hasn’t happened.

There’s been a lot of talk about Dan Savage lately. Frankly I hadn’t really paid any attention.

Hey he’s an activist, public speaker, television personality, blogger, sex advice columnist and makes a HELL of  a lot more money per year than I do.

Then Joe.my.god posts an excerpt from a Slate article saying that the author “nailed the Savage Flap”

I read the excerpt and thought “yeah” I agree with that so I went to the full article on Slate.

I  have to say the author makes some really good points. In the article Dan Savage is quoted as pointing out that Christians and Jews for that matter choose to ignore parts of the Bible that they no longer agree with.

Minor things.. .

Don’t eat shellfish

Don’t eat pork

Don’t work on the sabbath.

Stone an adulterer

It’s OK to keep slaves

Don’t mix linen and wool clothing items.

Savage goes on to say in his colorfully irreverent way that If Christians can ignore these things, they can just as easily learn to ignore the proscriptions against homosexuality.

I have to agree with him.

The Christian Right can’t pick and choose which rules it’s going to obey while at the same time condemning people with those same rules… That’s called hypocrisy.

Hypocrisy on the part of the established religion of the time is one of the reasons Christ got put on the cross. Even the Roman governor found the whole matter distasteful. We know this because he literally washed his hands of it.

Believe me Pilate would never have put the question to the crowd if he was convinced in the slightest of Christs guilt.

The Romans would have marched Christ and all the other criminals right out to Golgotha and that would have been the end of the story and another false “Prophet”. Rome wasn’t known for dealing lightly with it’s prefectures & they were especially heavy handed in the case of troublemakers or rebels.

The hypocrisy I speak of is not that of the crowd who freed the murderer instead of Christ. The Hypocrisy was on the part of the Pharisees who had become rich and powerful and invested in the Roman occupation. For them, it wasn’t about worshiping their God anymore it was about maintaining the status quo and good relations with Rome.

No I have no intention of deifying either Dan Savage or Joe. They’re both far from saints and certainly can’t walk on water even in their very best heels. I simply point out that Dan Savage is right.

If the Christian right wants to really demonstrate it’s commitment to fundamentalist, literal intrepretation of the Bible… They have to take all of it.

So NOM, Focus on the Family, and all you other hypocrites shut the hell up until you’re ready to have some good old stonings of adulterers. Oh and you can start with a number of your leaders. You know who they are, they made impassioned public pleas for forgiveness when they got caught cheating on their spouses.

Impassioned plea or not… Biblical law is the Biblical law. We know you’re sorry… but the law says you must be stoned to death.

Hummm Starts to sound a LOT like the Taliban doesn’t it?