Oh, for fuck’s sake. Someone is blaming the recent bird deaths on ‘the fact that America is violating God’s prohibition on homosexuality with support for gay marriage and the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’
This is annoying on so many levels, but the particular one which is bothering me today is this. I’m no biblical scholar, but I do know that Jesus said absolutely nothing about homosexuality. I don’t remember him saying much about sex at all, in fact.
On the other hand he did say quite a lot about money. Most memorably, of course, he said:
And moreover I say unto you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven.
But I don’t remember any of these bible-wielding nutters ever standing up after an earthquake, or a flood, or a load of dead blackbirds, and pointing the finger at Goldman Sachs, or Bank of America, or CitiGroup, or BP, or Exxon Mobil, or for that matter Apple or Google or Wal-Mart. Nope, it’s always the gays, the atheists, the liberals.
Admittedly, it would be equally nutty to blame natural disasters on Wall Street. But at least it would provide a bit of variety.
6 replies on “Gay marriage through the eye of a needle”
Actually, when I was young it was still quite common here in the USA for preachers to rail against Mammon. (I believe Rev. Jeremiah Wright did a bit of this in his day.) However, if you preach the Prosperity Gospel, or if you have a mega-media empire, it would be counterproductive to bring up that topic.
I don’t really know know what I’m talking about, of course. I suppose there probably are still plenty of people preaching against Mammon. For that matter, my sense is that the mainstream Church of England is probably still as likely to preach about ‘consumerism’ as sex. But somehow my impression is that the signs and portents crowd seem more interested in the fleshier sins.
Not taking up for the “signs and portents crowd” — love that phrase, but like Rebecca, I remember the Baptist preachers of my youth were likely to condemn Mammon. As for sex in any of its manifestations, it’s bad, bad, bad. It’s the Puritan influence. At least so Robert Hass says:
“The Puritans distrusted sexuality because the sexual act dissolved human will for a moment, because—for a moment—men fell into the roots of the mammal nature. You can’t have an orgasm and be a soldier of Christ.”
To be fair I only actually go into churches to look at the architecture, unless a friend is getting married or buried. So I’m not really talking from an informed position… but that has rarely stopped me.
And to be fair, I’m willing to award points for consistency for any preacher who is equally hostile to any form of sexual pleasure, homo or hetero: anything other than the bare minimum of sexual congress between a married couple for the purpose of conception. Although perhaps even that provides a dangerously liberal loophole for those who would turn away from the spiritual and sully themselves with Earthly Things.
My personal favorites are the old Billy Graham speeches. According to him, Jesus was a big defender of property rights. (Which, in Graham’s context, meant racial segregation.)
Ooh, look, yours is the 2000th comment. Not really a very big number; I need to post less stuff about obscure world literature and more comment bait about sexuality and religion.