Burnishing Bigotry - 3rd edition

Daniel #171: You then go on to cite several Scriptures in a long series, to once again try
and show that the Bible itself states that homosexuality is in & of itself a sin … Within this list,
you cite three verses (2 Kings 14:9 – ―Give your daughter to my son for a wife‖, 1 Chronicles 2:35 –
―Sheshan gave his daughter in marriage to his slave Jarha‖ & 1 Samuel 18:27 – ―Saul gave [David] his
daughter Michal as a wife‖) that describe fathers giving their daughters away to their future sonsin-law
– and you seem to think that this is proof that homosexual marriages were forbidden by
God, because ―you won't find any parents [in these verses] giving same-sex couples or their
children their blessing.‖
Seriously?!? Dan, you have got to be kidding me here, my Friend! For there is nothing
in these verses that say anything at all about homosexuality or homosexual relationships, much
less anything that condemns the same as being ―against God‘s will‖.
For starters, as I have mentioned several times in this thread already, homosexuals – due
to patent ignorance of the time regarding basic human sexuality – weren‘t even recognized as
such when the texts of the Bible were written. Secondly, just because a verse happens to
mention or allude to a one-man-one-woman heterosexual marriage does not mean that this is the
only kind of union sanctioned by God. Indeed, the Bible itself mentions many other types of
marriages that were considered acceptable at the time, including a man marrying one of his
slaves – even against her will (see Genesis 30:4-5), a solider marrying one of his prisoners – even
against her will (see Deuteronomy 21:11-14), a rapist marrying his victim – almost certainly
against her will (see Deuteronomy 22:28-29), and even outright multi-wife polygamy (see 1
Corinthians 7:32-35).
And besides, if we look at these three verses in their proper context, while remembering
the relatively women-denigrating social norms of the time, we can see that what they are actually
describing is a transaction of property – an exchange of women as chattel from one
family to another, and not the championing of one form of marriage over any other!
In essence, in avidly mining the Scriptures for verses that appear to sanctify your
personal prejudice against homosexuals and your personal denigration of homosexuality, you
have allowed yourself to not only cite Scripture out of context, but you have also allowed
yourself to become distracted from the one thing that is truly important -- that being: basic
human decency – otherwise known as Respect; otherwise known as LOVE!
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