There are simple reasons to reject Biblical authority. Very simple. One above all others–the Bible assigns people to roles from which, by virtue of divine mandate, they cannot abandon. It accords thinking beings no grant to be other than what the Bible says they should be.

Now, a lot of people treat this in one of two ways. The benign way is to simply ignore these restrictions until such a point where the deviations cannot be ignored. For instance, in the case of gay marriage. There has been a sliding metric of tolerance leading up to the point past which those professing a christian character simply cannot go. They sort of make these restrictions cases of, well, in an ideal, christian world these laws would hold, but we don’t live in that world, and since we all have to get along, well, we’ll just pretend they aren’t there for the most point. Because, you see, if they took them seriously, there would be a lot of public executions.

Which leads to me to the malign way of dealing with them–extremist posturing. These rules are god’s rules and we ignore them at out peril. Such people condemn people who are different, rail against the establishment, and actually work toward putting these rules into practice, either through mainstream legal institutions or by joining cults who leave mainstream society and set up little compounds here and there. The leaders of such groups become right vicious little tyrants and a peak inside their precincts …