Does the bible prohibit gay marriage, or are conservative Christians again up to their favorite trick, cherry-picking? The following excerpt from The Miami Herald [1] suggests that cherries are being picked in earnest.
[Matthew] Vines is a Christian, a 22-year-old Harvard undergrad raised in a conservative evangelical church in Kansas. He is also gay and says he grew up being taught that the Bible condemns his sexual orientation. He took two years off from school to research and study whether or not that assertion is true. The result is The Gay Debate: The Bible and Homosexuality. It’s a video. . . Vines’ speech is a masterwork of scriptural exegesis and a marvel of patient logic, slicing and dicing with surgical precision the claim that homophobia is God ordained. So effective is the video that after viewing it, Sandra Delemares a Christian blogger from the United Kingdom who had, for years, spoken in staunch opposition to same sex marriage, wrote that it “revolutionised” her thinking.
Vines points out, for instance, that the frequently quoted condemnation (homosexuality is an “abomination”) from the Old Testament lawbook of Leviticus has no application to Christians, who are bound by the teachings of the New Testament. He explains that St. Paul’s admonitions about the “effeminate” and “abusers of themselves with mankind” stem from modern mis-translations of ancient Greek terminology.
With that as an introduction, here is the video featuring Matthew Vines:
This is an impressive presentation. At the 16 minute mark, Matthew begins to examine the six bible passages that supposedly condemn homosexuality. None of them survive his scrutiny.
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