[lit-ideas] Re: Obama, Warren, Faith and Change

> > My understanding of the fundamentalist Christian
> rejection of homosexuality
> > is that it derives from a quirky reading of 1
> Corinthians 6: 9-10 and 1
> > Timothy 1: 9-10. 

This may be something true when rejectionists wish to point to some textual 
authority: but I've read that the rejectionist view came to prominence along 
with the doctrine (Pauline, afair) that the sole function of sex is 
procreation, ergo, since homosexual acts cannot lead to conception (unless a 
lesbian in the area gets some fertilising spray, but the Bible is poorly 
thought-out in terms of such specifics) they must be sinful. One might have 
thought that if Jesus really thought a sexual orientation could be sinful if 
practiced, and the alternative sinful unless practiced with some chance of 
procreation (so sex with post-menopausal women would be automatically sinful), 
he would have thought it germane to make some of this specific. Rather than 
leave it to Paul who appears to be something of the reformed alcoholic who 
wants to break up the party for everyone else.

It goes deeper: the reason humans are prey to mad preaching about the form and 
content of their sexual practices, has surely something to do with how sexual 
desire raises intense, conflicting feelings - including unpleasant, anguished 
ones which we may seek relief from through adherence to some approved practice; 
and consequently we may seek to impose that practice on others (even if that 
involves killing them).

Without this conflicted aspect of human sexual nature and its depth, we would 
hardly take these possible textual readings that seriously: after all, while 
adherents may fixate on the wrongness of forms of human sexuality even yet, how 
many still publicly fixate on the moral need for strict dietary regimes (e.g. 
no pig), mutual ablutions with fallen women etc.?

So making the point that textual disputes are often a forum/smoke-screen for 
underlying conflicts of values, ideology etc.: it is that underlying conflict 
that powers the textual dispute, not the text that powers the underlying 
conflict.

Donal
Not afraid to sound slightly Marxist sometimes
And always unafraid of being banal




------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html

Other related posts: