I Can Prove That "One Man, One Woman" Is Not "Biblical"

West Virginians who argue for a constitutional amendment defining marriage as “between one man and one woman” on the grounds that this is the “traditional”, Judeo Christian view of marriage and that the USA is a country based on Judeo Christian principles apparently haven’t read their Bibles. While I’ll stipulate that I am aware of no Biblical examples of gay marriage, the idea of marriage being between one man and one woman is of fairly recent Biblical origin. Many of the Bible’s heroes including Abraham, Moses, Gideon, Jacob and David, just to name a few, had more than one wife. Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines.

And even if the Judeo Christian “tradition” about marriage were not fluid, the problem with using religious principles to define marriage is that the USA is not made up exclusively of religious people. And it’s certainly not made up exclusively of Christians and Jews. The founding fathers wisely didn’t adopt the Old Testament as the constitution of the USA – though theonomists and other theocrats wish they had. Instead of adopting a religious book as the constitution of the USA, the founders wrote one. The constitution the founders wrote specifically doesn’t establish any religion. Later, when Thomas Jefferson wrote a letter to the Danbury Baptists assuring them that there is a “wall of separation” between church and state, the Baptists were relieved.

Jefferson’s “wall of separation” was like Roger Williams’ “hedge” between the “garden of the church” and the “wilderness of the world.” Williams founded the first Baptist church in the new world.

While early theonomists were killing "the Indians" to clear the way for their "city on a hill" Rogers befriended and was trusted by the "Indians."

For readers who were taught that our nation’s “founders” came here to establish a Christian nation, let me correct you. Our nation’s founders didn’t “come” to America they were born here. I don’t think it’s accidentaI that elementary school plays confound and co-mingle the arrival of the Pilgrims with the establishment of the nation even though those events were 150 years apart and the Pilgrims and Puritans were long dead when post-Christian founders like Jefferson and Franklin and Washington founded the nation. I’m aware that theocratic books like Peter Marshall and David Manuel’s The Light And The Glory and all books by David Barton and George Grant and Gary North and R J Rushdoony have popularized the idea that Jesus wants conservative Christians to make the USA a Christian nation based largely on the Old Testament, but “reconstructionists”, theonomists and people who believe in “dominion” will find no foundation for that sentiment in the founders and would need a constitutional convention to overturn our current constitution in order to make this a “Christian nation”.

I’m embarrassed that, not only do I live in a nation where voters think of Pilgrims and Puritans when someone says the word “founders” but I live in a nation where some voters think it’s OK to charge taxes and impose Christian ideas about sex and marriage on Muslims, Hindus and atheists.

I often ask right wing theocrats if they think Jesus supports theft because that’s what it is to take taxes from everybody then use those taxes to build a society that provides the rights to pursue life liberty and happiness only to a specific subset of Christians.

Here’s what reconstructionists, theonomists and other theocrats would do if they had the courage of their convictions: First they would absolutely strip all homosexuals and atheists of their US citizenship. If they aren’t citizens, they have no rights. Next they would refund all taxes paid by atheists and homosexuals because it would be unchristian to take taxes from people who have no rights.

This, of course, will never happen because the hypocrites who want to deny gays the right to marry or the right to rent an apartment or the right to work at jobs for which they are qualified also want to collect taxes from them and keep them in a sort of second class citizenship where our laws and our courts make some people more equal than others.

I’m not unsympathetic to evangelical Christians. I used to be one so I understand that when politicians want to pass laws that make it OK for gays to marry voting for those politicians feels like condoning homosexuality.

But then I realized that voting for people who want to deny gays the right to marry is condoning theft of tax money.

You don’t have to be gay or condone homosexuality to want all tax-paying, law-abiding citizens to get the freedoms and the happiness their tax money is supposed to assure. You can still think gays are going to hell. You can still think gay sex is gross.

You can still hate gays – though you’ll have some trouble reconciling hatred with Jesus - or imagining a Jesus who hates gays.

And because I used to be an evangelical and even flirted with the “reconstruction” movement, I know that evangelicals have lost sight of what they call “The Great Commission” which is to convert people to Jesus.

No gay was ever converted to Jesus because somebody was unkind to him.

Evangelicals know full well that hating gays and denying them jobs and denying them apartments and denying them the right to marry whom they wish has never and will never convert any gay to Jesus so I can only conclude that when evangelicals insist on being mean to gays it’s not because they love them and want to save them and keep them from going to hell.

The last time I wrote a post in support of gay rights I got hateful comments from so-called Christians and I expect to get such hateful comments again. If those comments are clean and civil I will publish them.

Lots of gay people and gay orgs started following me on Twitter. Just for the record, I have to approve follower requests and I don't approve them just because you agree with my blog.

As "Flo" the Progressive insurance woman says, "there's no discount for agreeing with me."

Here's what I would like to happen this time: I would like for my elected officials to write legislation that makes it illegal for cities, counties and the state of West Virginia to deny jobs or housing or marriage to gay people who pay their taxes and have a right to all the protections that our tax money is supposed to pay for.

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Higginbotham At Large welcomes all comments – especially comments that provide an opposing point of view. Just keep it clean and civil and I’ll be happy to publish your remarks.

Why Jesus Would Support Same Sex Marriage

Gay marriage was back in the news again this week because former Bush administration solicitor general, Theodore "Ted" Olsen, filed suit in federal court seeking to overturn California's Proposition 8 and re-establish the right of same-sex couples to marry.

Conservative talk show hosts know that few things rile up their listeners like gay marraige so they took to the airwaves this week and asked their callers what they think of gay marriage with predictable results: call after call citing the Bible's condemnation of homosexuality.

If America were a conservative, evangelical theocracy with the Bible as its constitution, Bible verses against homosexuality might be the debate enders these conservative callers want them to be, but America is not a conservative evangelical theocracy. Had the founders wanted America to be a theocracy based on the Bible, all they had to do was adopt the BIble as the constitution of our new nation. The kind of Bible-quoters who find it inconvenient that the founders didn't adopt the Bible as the our nation's constitution are the same ones who find it inconvenient that the "City On A Hill" theocrats who landed at Massachusetts in the early 1600s were long in their graves before our post-Renaissance founders, many of them skeptics or deists, established this nation in the late 1700s. Yes, it's true that Puritans and Anabaptists first came to this land to freely express their religious convictions but it was not Puritans or Anabaptists who founded this nation. This nation was, in fact, founded by the likes of Thomas Jefferson who actually excised from the gospels the parts he didn't believe and published what came to be known as The Jefferson Bible.

When people say I should oppose gay marriage because the Bible condemns homosexuality, I ask them if they think the Jesus of the Bible would be against theft. When they say, yes, of course he would, I tell them that I don't think the Jesus of the Bible would condone theft either and that our government is committing theft anytime it collects taxes from citizens who are denied the freedoms and justice paid for by taxes. I tell them that whatever Jesus may or may not think of same sex marriage, we can all agree that injustices angered Jesus and that they should anger us too.

But there is a way for Bible-quoting evangelicals who think the US should be a Christian theocracy to have their justice and their theocracy, too, though I note with fascination that they never suggest it. If conservatives had the courage of their convictions, they would move to stop taxing gay people, to repay all taxes paid by gay people, revoke the citizenship of gay people and declare gay people to be aliens or visitors who are not entitled to the same freedoms enjoyed by straight people and not subject to the taxation of our great, straight nation.

Former Bush lawyer, Ted Olsen, is right when he says ""It is our position in this case that Proposition 8, as upheld by the California Supreme Court, denies federal constitutional rights under the equal protection and due process clauses of the constitution,. The constitution protects individuals' basic rights that cannot be taken away by a vote. If the people of California had voted to ban interracial marriage, it would have been the responsibility of the courts to say that they cannot do that under the constitution. We believe that denying individuals in this category the right to lasting, loving relationships through marriage is a denial to them, on an impermissible basis, of the rights that the rest of us enjoy…I also personally believe that it is wrong for us to continue to deny rights to individuals on the basis of their sexual orientation."