homosexuality

Originally I intended to add a comment to Jacob’s excellent post-and-discussion about homosexuality and conservatism, but I thought it might be worthwhile to bring the Conservapedia into the limelight. Maybe I’m the only OST reader who hasn’t seen this thing, because it’s alive, it’s already big, and it’s growing fast. And it seems to have the homosexual plague lined up in its sites.

Where and how does the Bible provide context for the widely held believe that “G-d defines marriage as between a man and a woman”?

My argument is that many evangelicals creatively weave the contemporary word “homosexuality” and its attendant meanings back into the Biblical text and context through the process of story telling. Specifically, they take a topic that emerged enforce during the 1980s and project it back into history as if “homosexuality” had always been a hot button issue for Christians and evangelicals. The effect of this creative storytelling is to tie the Holy Bible to the present political issue of “homosexuality” in a way that justifies the speaker’s condemnation on Biblical grounds. The result is that even though “homosexuality” is not literally or empirically in the Bible, many conservative evangelicals imagine it there anyway.

It is commonplace to hear that “the Bible says clearly that homosexual practice is a sin” or some similar derivation of that.

Yet a quick peek into any of the popular translations of the Bible today reveals that ‘homosexuality’ or ‘homosexual practice’ are not empirically in the texts themselves. There is no mention of these ‘sins,’ as is commonly argued.

I’ve recently read the thread about sex before marriage and I’m interested in pursuing a slightly different question. The relationship of romantic and sexual relationships to covenant is, it seems to me, a key understanding; one can even make a strong point for “the Divine Romance” as part of the Scriptures. I’m also working my way through ost material on the nature and use of Scripture in the emerging Church. Again, commitment to the mission and person of Jesus should drive and inform our commitment to the story told through Jewish and Christian sacred writings using a ‘critical-realist’ hermeneutic.