Dan Savage is no stranger so controversy. At a recent conference, he attacked the cherry-picking of those who relying on the Bible to attack gays. After all, he argues, they don’t cite the Bible to justify slavery any more, and they aren’t trying to pass laws to stone women who are not virgins on their wedding nights. A group of students walked out while Savage criticized this bible cherry-picking.
In the speech, Savage, citing Sam Harris’ “Letter to a Christian Nation,” said the Bible gave instructions about how to treat slaves. If the Bible erred “on the easiest moral question that humanity has ever faced … What are the odds that the Bible got something as complicated as human sexuality wrong? 100 percent,” said Savage. Students are heard cheering and clapping.
After the walkout, which came after Savage made comments about the Bible, he suggested the protesting students return. “It’s funny, as someone who is the receiving end of beatings that are justified by the Bible, how pansy-assed some people react when you push back,” Savage said.
There’s a couple of important distinctions to make here. First, slavery was not a commandment. No one was required to own slaves. However, the prohibition on men lying with men, and more broadly, the prohibition on fornication, is a requirement.
The main point of your post though is to dispute Biblical inerrancy, which is fair enough, but isn’t going to convince the faithful. Either the Bible is divine or it isn’t. If it’s full of crap, it’s not divine and you shouldn’t believe in anything it says.
Christians do get it wrong in that they aren’t supposed to hate gay people. They are supposed to hate sin, not sinners. And they tend to focus on sex sin more than any other types of sin, especially gay sex. But this campaign by gay Christians to actually get homosexuality declared no longer a sin isn’t going to go anywhere. It’s like trying to tell Jews and Muslims that it’s okay to eat pork. Most Jews do in fact eat pork, but you don’t see any of them running around the country saying that Judaism should accept pork as kosher, it was all a misunderstanding. Secular Jews seem to have a clearer understanding of this stuff than Christians. Jews accept their religion for what it is, and they either believe or they do not believe. Christians want to customize their religious experience to the point where they get to live secular lives, but still have Jesus. Jews are more realistic: they simply deny God if they don’t like his rules and that’s that.
I love this guy. He pretty much hit the nail on the head about everything. Christians need to learn from the mistakes they’ve made in the past and think, oh wait, maybe the bible is being interpreted wrong, maybe we’re wrong on this too and in fact what if the bible is after all complete and utter bullshit that is getting people killed and spreading this hate that doesn’t even need to exist! If got is real, he’s a bigoted, homophobic piece of crap and I invite him to “strike me down” on the spot…. Nope wait I’m still alive. Funny that.