Burnishing Bigotry - 3rd edition

Lucy #044: Next you claim that, ―God placed certain desires in mankind for the
opposite sex, but He asks man curb his natural desire to have more than one woman and stick
solely with the one he married.‖ … My dear Friend, this statement, of course, is fully false on
soooo many fronts – both those scientific as well as those biblical … Please consider:
*First of all, at least as far as science is concerned, homosexuality is just as ―natural‖ as
heterosexuality – at least in the 1500+ species in which it has been scientifically observed up to
now (as cited by Bagemihl in 1999, Roughgarden in 2004, and Sommer & Vasey in 2006). Yes, it is
true that homosexuality is found in only a minority of the observed sexual partnerships within
these species (ranging in prevalence from 5% to 11% of the various populations studied), and yet these
minority occurrences are always found nonetheless – and therefore are just as ―natural‖ and just
as ―normal‖ as their heterosexual ―cousins‖. [Note: please refer as well to the 12+ scientific studies I
referenced earlier (on pages 78-80 previously) that show quite clearly that being gay is far more ―nature‖
than it is ―nurture‖, and certainly almost never a purely personal choice.]
*Secondly, at least as far as the Bible is concerned, there are many other forms of
marriage that are equally sanctioned in the Scriptures aside from the ―one man and one woman‖
version you reference … Indeed, aside from the traditional one man/one woman marriage you
mention (alluded to in Genesis 2:24), it was equally acceptable for a widowed woman to marry –
and then be impregnated by – a brother-in-law or other close male relative (a la Ruth & Onan in
Genesis 38:6-10) … OR for a man to marry one of his female slaves (a la Abraham in Genesis 16:1-
6 or Jacob in Genesis 30:4-5) … OR for a man to be simultaneously married to more than one
woman (see Lamech, Jacob & Ashur – who each had two wives; Esau & Rehaboam – who each had
three wives; Gideon & David – who each had ―many‖ wives; Abijah – who had 14 wives; and Solomon –
who had 700 wives) … OR for a man to be simultaneously married to his wife and one or more
concubines (see Judges 19:1-30) … OR for a male soldier to marry a female prisoner of
war without her consent (see Deuteronomy 21:11-14) … OR for a rape victim to be
forced to marry her rapist (see Deuteronomy 22:28-29) … OR for male & female slaves
to be forced to marry without consent (see Exodus 21:4).
This makes it somehow seem a bit silly for you to claim that today‘s, traditional one
man/one woman marriage is somehow ―Biblical‖, doesn‘t it! …
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