Fox News Endorses Traditional Heterosexual Marriage With Mistaken Photo Of Same Sex Wedding
Dear Fred,
A recent post by Laura Wood is titled “The United States of Homosexual Imperialism.”
Loss of perspective, perhaps?
It is apropos to recall the 19th century practice of advocating slavery from the pulpit – complete with bible-based justifications.
The salient difference between “then” and “now” is that, in the case of slavery, The Bible Belt’s routine pigheadedness finally got its nose rubbed so vigorously in its own ideological crap that it was no longer possible to boast its lack of moral potty training.
I think it safe to say that Laura would argue a categorical difference between supporting abolition and supporting homosexual civil rights. (Or would she?)
Notably, Y’eshua makes NO reference to homosexuality. (Similarly, the Bible makes no reference to abortion. Not a single word.)
It beggars imagination that the “two red button issues” in American conservative politics are homosexuality and abortion.
I suggest that the current generation of Pharisees concentrate their focus on what Y’eshua actually said before screaming the “existential importance” of what he did not say.
Here, for example, is Y’eshua’s categorical declaration on divorce as set forth in the earliest of the four canonical gospels:
1 Jesus then left that place and went into the region of Judea and across the Jordan. Again crowds of people came to him, and as was his custom, he taught them. 2 Some Pharisees came and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” 3 “What did Moses command you?” he replied. 4 They said, “Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away.” 5 “It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law,” Jesus replied. 6 “But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female.’[a] 7 ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife,[b] 8and the two will become one flesh.’[c] So they are no longer two, but one flesh. 9 Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” 10 When they were in the house again, the disciples asked Jesus about this. 11 He answered, “Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her.12 And if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery.”
The core contradiction whereby conservative Christians focus what Jesus didn’t say while essentially ignoring what he did say, is set against a backdrop in which Evangelicals, Fundamentalists and Baptists are significantly more likely to divorce than atheists and agnostics – http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/137829/evangelicals_why_do_we_have_the_highest.html
This same Marcan passage expresses Jesus’ belief in “moral relativism,” casually observing that Moses’ lax moral standard hinged on the circumstance of hard-heartedness.
Moses – the great promulgator of Law – deliberately promotes legal laxity because his fellow Jews were dense. If the people can not live up to a high moral standard, well… hold them to a low one.
And Y’eshua approves!
I venture that Laura and her conservative friends beat up on the presumed “immorality” of “gays and lesbians” because their presumption of self righteousness obliges them to project their own moral shortcomings onto “the other.”
And what better way to beat up on “the other” than to attack the smallest of all social groups.
Hypocritical presumption is so widespread among America’s conservative Christians that – after years of listening to them rant about “the rest of us going to hell” — I would venture that, when they get to “The Pearly Gates,” more unpleasant surprises await “The Saved!” than await prostitutes, wine tipplers and traitorous tax collectors (who were employed by the pagan occupying army, and whose military leaders then used those taxes to destroy The Temple, launching the Jewish diaspora.
If my surmise is correct, a disproportionate number of those “surprises” will be due to the zeal with which American Christians have supported war – and more recently, torture.
If I recall correctly, Laura is a firm believer that “men” should make every “belligerent” decision.
My counsel to “The Saved!” is that they are highly unlikely to be exempted from moral responsibly just because they refused participation in political process.
In fact, I think it likely that their refusal makes them more responsible for the bad decisions made by “men” stupidly deprived of the integral wisdom that would have obtained if everyone — men and women alike — were fully conscious participants in every political process.
The decades-long scenario described by Marine Commandant, Major General Smedley Butler portrays an incalculable collective evil whose moral impact redounds to anyone who — for whatever reason — deliberately refused to participate in decisions of “war and peace.”
To quote the Marine who — during his lifetime — was the most decorated jarhead ever: “I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especiallyTampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.” U.S. Marine Major General Smedley D. Butler, who, following his retirement from the military, ran for the Senate as a Pennsylvania Republican.
Notice that the first 2 evil-doers identified by General Butler are “Big Business” and “Wall Street.”
What has changed… other than the Military-Industrial Complex’s tightened grip? http://www.sonyclassics.com/whywefight/
By my lights, the “Great Refusal” to fully participate in political process imposes an even greater moral burden on those who did not inform themselves sufficiently to actively oppose the moral monstrosities of Vietnam, Iraq etcetera.
"Time Line Of U.S. Military Interventions"
Wikipedia
Resistance to Uncle Sam’s decerebrate villainy in Iraq did not require but a handful of functioning synapses. I cannot believe that American Christians are as addlepated and/or witless as they (repeatedly) seem – http://www.cjd.org/paper/benedict.html
But back to the issue of homosexuality…
I have long thought that “the apostle whom Jesus loved” reveals a relationship with “a certain connotation” which in recent years has made me ponder the significance of Y’eshua’s remarkable statement, “I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.”
If Y’eshua had — in any way — sided with homosexuality, he would have been assassinated at once, and, in consequence, his more central message would have been nipped in the bud.
We are all products of our time and thereby constrained by what we can say fruitfully - and what we must refrain from saying because the time is not ripe for revelation.
It is useful practice to imagine at least one thing that Y’eshua could not have told his apostles (“the cream of the crop”) because they could not “bear it.”
Then, when you have conjured one such “unbearable thing,” recall that Y’eshua had “many more unbearable things” to tell us.
The best is enemy of the good.
The profoundest truths are paradoxical.
The last shall be first.
“The Saved” shall be…
Pax on both houses,
Alan
PS What do you think? Would Laura have the courage to post this on “Thinking Housewife?”
PPS Perhaps Laura does not participate in political process because so many of her partisans are political lunatics. Rather than joining them in a political movement, she hides in her blog, leaving the dirty business of gay derogation and white supremacy to her fellows.
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