A Review of

1
A Review of Lisa Millers Cover Story, Our
Mutual Joy, in the Dec. 15, 2008 issue of
Newsweek
A Review of Newsweeks Dec. 15, 2008 Issue The
Religious Case for Gay Marriage
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Review of Newsweeks Dec. 15, 2008 Issue The
Religious Case for Gay Marriage

• Blatantly Misuse, Twist Falsify Bible Teachings
• Try to prove truths using random examples
• Ex Marriages of Abraham, Jacob, David, Solomon
• Make false claims altogether
• The Bible endorses slavery, a practice that
  Americans now universally consider shameful and
  barbaric.It provides conceptual shelter for
  anti-Semites.
• Take that which is pure and make it perverted
  and evil
• Ex Story of David Jonathan

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Review of Newsweeks Dec. 15, 2008 Issue The
Religious Case for Gay Marriage

• Gay men like to point to the story of passionate
  King David and his friend Jonathan, with whom he
  was "one spirit" and whom he "loved as he loved
  himself." Conservatives say this is a story about
  a platonic friendship, but it is also a story
  about two men who stand up for each other in
  turbulent times, through violent war and the
  disapproval of a powerful parent. David rends his
  clothes at Jonathan's death and, in grieving,
  writes a song
• I grieve for you, Jonathan my brotherYou were
  very dear to me.Your love for me was
  wonderful,More wonderful than that of women.
• Here, the Bible praises enduring love between
  men. What Jonathan and David did or did not do in
  privacy is perhaps best left to history and our
  own imaginations.

Sick! Twist the meaning of Biblical
love! Typical mind in the gutter! Always
sexual! Jonathan defended David, saved him from
death yielded his right to the throne. The
danger of speaking about something where the
Bible is silent!
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Review of Newsweeks Dec. 15, 2008 Issue The
Religious Case for Gay Marriage

• Blatantly Misuse, Twist Falsify Bible Teachings
• Try to prove truths using random examples
• Ex Marriages of Abraham, Jacob, David, Solomon
• Make false claims altogether
• The Bible endorses slavery, a practice that
  Americans now universally consider shameful and
  barbaric.It provides conceptual shelter for
  anti-Semites.
• Take that which is pure and make it perverted
  and evil
• Ex Story of David Jonathan
• Twist Jesus actions words to meet their own
  wishes
• Ex Their wish that Jesus accept everyone
  unconditionally

5
Review of Newsweeks Dec. 15, 2008 Issue The
Religious Case for Gay Marriage

• In the Christian story, the message of acceptance
  for all is codified. Jesus reaches out to
  everyone, especially those on the margins, and
  brings the whole Christian community into his
  embrace.The story of Jesus revealing himself
  to the woman at the well no matter that she had
  five former husbands and a current boyfriendis
  evidence of Christ's all-encompassing love. The
  practice of inclusion, even in defiance of social
  convention, the reaching out to outcasts, the
  emphasis on togetherness and community over and
  against chaos, depravity, indifferenceall these
  biblical values argue for gay marriage.

Acceptable for all is conditional! Requires
obedience! Come unto me alltake My yoke upon
you (Matt. 1128-30). Eternal salvation to
all who obey Him (Heb. 59). All-encompassing
love does not overlook or condone sin. Go and
sin no more. Unless you repent you will
likewise perish. You did not do it to Me.
And these shall go away into everlasting
punishment. Inclusionover and against chaos,
depravity, indifference? those are not
biblical values Inclusion in the family of
God is based upon mans obedience to the will of
God!
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Review of Newsweeks Dec. 15, 2008 Issue The
Religious Case for Gay Marriage

• Blatantly Misuse, Twist Falsify Bible Teachings
• Try to prove truths using random examples
• Ex Marriages of Abraham, Jacob, David, Solomon
• Make false claims altogether
• The Bible endorses slavery, a practice that
  Americans now universally consider shameful and
  barbaric.It provides conceptual shelter for
  anti-Semites.
• Take that which is pure and make it perverted
  and evil
• Ex Story of David Jonathan
• Twist Jesus actions words to meet their own
  wishes
• Ex Their wish that Jesus accept everyone
  unconditionally
• Wrongfully claim were all Gods children
  anyway

7
Review of Newsweeks Dec. 15, 2008 Issue The
Religious Case for Gay Marriage

• If we are all God's children, made in his
  likeness and image, then to deny access to any
  sacrament based on sexuality is exactly the same
  thing as denying it based on skin color

We are NOT all Gods children. A child of God
is one who has obeyed Gods will (Gal. 326-27).
We have all been created by God, but NO ONE was
created a homosexual. There is NO GAY GENE! Did
God create a man homosexual then condemn him to
death? No! Homosexuality is a learned behavior!
It is something a person chooses to do! There is
no parallel between skin color and homosexuality!
Where is the verse that condemns skin color in
any way?
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Review of Newsweeks Dec. 15, 2008 Issue The
Religious Case for Gay Marriage

• Blatantly Misuse, Twist Falsify Bible Teachings
• Dismiss Mock the Bible Itself
• Try to claim that the Bible cannot be trusted

9
Review of Newsweeks Dec. 15, 2008 Issue The
Religious Case for Gay Marriage

• The Editors Desk
• Given the history of the making of the Scriptures
  and the millennia of critical attention scholars
  and others have given to the stories and
  injunctions that come to us in the Hebrew Bible
  and the Christian New Testament, to argue that
  something is so because it is in the Bible is

10
Review of Newsweeks Dec. 15, 2008 Issue The
Religious Case for Gay Marriage

• Blatantly Misuse, Twist Falsify Bible Teachings
• Dismiss Mock the Bible Itself
• Try to claim that the Bible cannot be trusted
• Try to claim that the Bible writers were inept
  and uninspired

11
Review of Newsweeks Dec. 15, 2008 Issue The
Religious Case for Gay Marriage

• The fact that homosexual couples cannot procreate
  has also been raised as a biblical objection, for
  didn't God say, "Be fruitful and multiply"? But
  the Bible authors could never have imagined the
  brave new world of international adoption and
  assisted reproductive technology
• The Bible was written for a world so unlike our
  own

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Review of Newsweeks Dec. 15, 2008 Issue The
Religious Case for Gay Marriage

• Blatantly Misuse, Twist Falsify Bible Teachings
• Dismiss Mock the Bible Itself
• Try to claim that the Bible cannot be trusted
• Try to claim that the Bible writers were inept
  and uninspired
• Dismiss Mock the Authority of the Bible
• Mock opposition to homosexuality using Bible as
  final authority

13
Review of Newsweeks Dec. 15, 2008 Issue The
Religious Case for Gay Marriage

• The Editors Desk
• On the campus of Wheaton College in Illinois last
  Wednesday, in another of the seemingly endless
  announcements of splintering and schism in the
  Episcopal Church, the Rt. Rev. Robert Duncan and
  other leaders of the conservative forces of
  reaction to the ecclesiastical and cultural
  acceptance of homosexuality declared that their
  opposition to the ordination and the marriage of
  gays was irrevocably rooted in the Biblewhich
  they regard as the "final authority and
  unchangeable standard for Christian faith and
  life.
• One can decide to oppose it in good faith, but
  such opposition should at least be forged by
  those in full possession of the relevant cultural
  and religious history and context.

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Review of Newsweeks Dec. 15, 2008 Issue The
Religious Case for Gay Marriage

• Lisa Millers article
• A mature view of scriptural authority requires
  us, as we have in the past, to move beyond
  literalism.
• We cannot look to the Bible as a marriage manual,
  but we can read it for universal truths as we
  struggle toward a more just future.

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Review of Newsweeks Dec. 15, 2008 Issue The
Religious Case for Gay Marriage

• Blatantly Misuse, Twist Falsify Bible Teachings
• Dismiss Mock the Bible Itself
• Try to claim that the Bible cannot be trusted
• Try to claim that the Bible writers were inept
  and uninspired
• Dismiss Mock the Authority of the Bible
• Mock opposition to homosexuality using Bible as
  final authority
• Complain of unfair Scriptural advantage of gay
  marriage opponents

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Review of Newsweeks Dec. 15, 2008 Issue The
Religious Case for Gay Marriage

• the sides are unevenly matched. All the
  religious rhetoric, it seems, has been on the
  side of the gay-marriage opponents, who use
  Scripture as the foundation for their objections.

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Review of Newsweeks Dec. 15, 2008 Issue The
Religious Case for Gay Marriage

• Blatantly Misuse, Twist Falsify Bible Teachings
• Dismiss Mock the Bible Itself
• Try to claim that the Bible cannot be trusted
• Try to claim that the Bible writers were inept
  and uninspired
• Dismiss Mock the Authority of the Bible
• Mock opposition to homosexuality using Bible as
  final authority
• Complain of unfair Scriptural advantage of gay
  marriage opponents
• Admit but then move on and dismiss clear Bible
  authority

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Review of Newsweeks Dec. 15, 2008 Issue The
Religious Case for Gay Marriage

• The Bible does condemn gay male sex in a handful
  of passages. Twice Leviticus refers to sex
  between men as "an abomination
• Paul was tough on homosexuality
• It recommends the death penalty for adulterers
  (and in Leviticus, for men who have sex with men,
  for that matter).

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Review of Newsweeks Dec. 15, 2008 Issue The
Religious Case for Gay Marriage

• Blatantly Misuse, Twist Falsify Bible Teachings
• Dismiss Mock the Bible Itself
• Dismiss Mock the Authority of the Bible
• Dismiss Mock Bible Teachings
• Claim homosexuality is intrinsic or inherited

20
Review of Newsweeks Dec. 15, 2008 Issue The
Religious Case for Gay Marriage

• The Editors Desk
• Briefly put, the Judeo-Christian religious case
  for supporting gay marriage begins with the
  recognition that sexual orientation is not a
  choicea matter of behaviorbut is as intrinsic
  to a person's makeup as skin color.

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Review of Newsweeks Dec. 15, 2008 Issue The
Religious Case for Gay Marriage

• Blatantly Misuse, Twist Falsify Bible Teachings
• Dismiss Mock the Bible Itself
• Dismiss Mock the Authority of the Bible
• Dismiss Mock Bible Teachings
• Claim homosexuality is intrinsic or inherited
• Try to ignore any principles taught in the book
  of Leviticus

22
Review of Newsweeks Dec. 15, 2008 Issue The
Religious Case for Gay Marriage

• The Editors Desk
• Christianspoint to certain passages in the
  Bible to condemn homosexuality anddeny the
  sacrament of marriage to homosexuals. This
  argument from Scripture is difficult to take
  seriouslythough many, many people dosince the
  passages in question pointing to Leviticus are
  part and parcel of texts that, with equal
  ferocity, forbid particular haircuts.
• Lisa Miller article
• these are throwaway lines in a peculiar text
  given over to codes for living in the ancient
  Jewish world, a text that devotes verse after
  verse to treatments for leprosy, cleanliness
  rituals for menstruating women and the correct
  way to sacrifice a goator a lamb or a turtle
  dove. Most of us no longer heed Leviticus on
  haircuts or blood sacrificesWhy would we regard
  its condemnation of homosexuality with more
  seriousness than we regard its advice, which is
  far lengthier, on the best price to pay for a
  slave?

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Review of Newsweeks Dec. 15, 2008 Issue The
Religious Case for Gay Marriage

• Blatantly Misuse, Twist Falsify Bible Teachings
• Dismiss Mock the Bible Itself
• Dismiss Mock the Authority of the Bible
• Dismiss Mock Bible Teachings
• Claim homosexuality is intrinsic or inherited
• Try to ignore any principles taught in the book
  of Leviticus
• Blatantly ignore Bible definition for marriage

24
Review of Newsweeks Dec. 15, 2008 Issue The
Religious Case for Gay Marriage

• while the Bible and Jesus say many important
  things about love and family, neither explicitly
  defines marriage as between one man and one woman.

WRONG! And the LORD God said, It is not good
that man should be alone I will make him a
helper comparable to himHe made into a woman,
and He brought her to the manTherefore a man
shallbe joined to his wife, and they shall
become one flesh (Gen. 218-24). Jesus He who
made them at the beginning made them male and
female, and said, For this reason a man
shallbe joined to his wife, and the two shall
become one flesh? So then, they are no longer
two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined
together, let not man separate (Mt. 194-6).
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Review of Newsweeks Dec. 15, 2008 Issue The
Religious Case for Gay Marriage

• Blatantly Misuse, Twist Falsify Bible Teachings
• Dismiss Mock the Bible Itself
• Dismiss Mock the Authority of the Bible
• Dismiss Mock Bible Teachings
• Dismiss Mock Bible Believers, Followers
  Teachers

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Review of Newsweeks Dec. 15, 2008 Issue The
Religious Case for Gay Marriage

• The Editors Desk
• No matter what one thinks about gay rightsfor,
  against or somewhere in between this
  conservative resort to biblical authority is the
  worst kind of fundamentalism. Given the history
  of the making of the Scriptures and the millennia
  of critical attention scholars and others have
  given to the stories and injunctions that come to
  us in the Hebrew Bible and the Christian New
  Testament, to argue that something is so because
  it is in the Bible is more than intellectually
  bankruptit is unserious, and unworthy of the
  great Judeo-Christian tradition

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Review of Newsweeks Dec. 15, 2008 Issue The
Religious Case for Gay Marriage

• Lisa Millers Article
• Would any contemporary heterosexual married
  couplewho likely woke up on their wedding day
  harboring some optimistic and newfangled ideas
  about gender equality and romantic loveturn to
  the Bible as a how-to script?
• Of course not, yet the religious opponents of gay
  marriage would have it be so.
• no sensible modern person wants marriagetheirs
  or anyone else's to look in its particulars
  anything like what the Bible describes.
• If we are all God's children, made in his
  likeness and image, then to deny access to any
  sacrament based on sexuality is exactly the same
  thing as denying it based on skin colorand no
  serious (or even semiserious) person would argue
  that.

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Review of Newsweeks Dec. 15, 2008 Issue The
Religious Case for Gay Marriage

• Blatantly Misuse, Twist Falsify Bible Teachings
• Dismiss Mock the Bible Itself
• Dismiss Mock the Authority of the Bible
• Dismiss Mock Bible Teachings
• Dismiss Mock Bible Believers, Followers
  Teachers

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What the Bible teaches
Lev. 2013 Homosexuality abomination to God
worthy of death Gen. 18-19 Homosexuality is a sin
and very grievous (1820), wicked (1823, 25
197), worthy of Gods destruction (1823-25,
28, 31-32 1913). Jude 7 Homosexuality is going
after strange flesh Result suffering
vengeance of eternal fire, an example 2 Pet.
26 Homosexuality condemned as an example to
ungodly Rom. 124-32 Homosexuality is uncleanness
(v. 24), dishonoring ones body (v. 25), vile
(v. 26), against nature (v. 26-27),
unseemly/shameful behavior (v. 27), can harm
your body with just punishment (v. 27), a
serious error (v. 27), worthy of death (v.
32) 1 Cor. 69 Homosexuals will not inherit the
kingdom of God 1 Tim. 19-10 Homosexuals in same
lawless class as murderers