I know not everyone will agree with my position on this, but I don't care! My blog, my opinion.
Gay marriage. Or as i prefer to call it marriage. I am completely in favour of marriage equality. I am not ashamed to say it. Quite frankly I dont understand people that oppose it. Most often it is possible so call themselves Christians. It makes me want to scream & shout at people. How can you say you are all about peace, love & acceptance but then be PROUD to say you agree with institutionalised discrimination? Marriage is not exclusive to Christians. It wasnt even 'created' by Christians.
I should also add here I am not a fan of religion. I do not believe in the indoctrination of vulnerable people, especially children who are told what to believe from an incredibly young age. I don't have a problem with people making an informed choice for themselves. I cant stand seeing kids being brainwashed from birth. I happen to think the Bible is a best selling book of fiction. However if either of my boys decided he was Christian, and had actually considered it fully, understood what it meant & was making an informed choice they would have my never ending support despite my own feelings on religion. I have no intention of introducing religion to the boys until they have the cognitive capacity to make informed & educated opinions. But I digress.
NZ has legalised gay marriage. This is a fabulous step forward, one i hope Australia will soon follow. Looking back at history things that at the time seemed completely reasonable, are now seen as discriminatory & we are ashamed people thought it was ok. This is how we will look back on the legalisation of gay marriage in 20 years.
The time is now to stand up & acknowledge that 'gay' marriage is no different to marriage. Allowing any 2 consenting adults in a loving, committed relationship to be married in no way detracts from my marriage, or makes it worth any less. All it does is grant them the same rights i, and many others, take for granted.
The most quoted opposition i have seen is from Leviticus 18:22 "You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female; it is an abomination."
Leviticus also opposes a long list of things Christians are happy to dismiss, or ignore:
Leviticus 19:27 reads "You shall not round off the side-growth of your heads nor harm the edges of your beard." - sorry guys, no bowl cuts
Leviticus 11:8, which is discussing pigs, reads "You shall not eat of their flesh nor touch their carcasses; they are unclean to you." - oops, no football, sorry! Or worse - no bacon!!
Leviticus 19:28 reads, "You shall not make any cuts in your body for the dead nor make any tattoo marks on yourselves: I am the Lord." - what, no tattoos?!!
Leviticus 19:19 reads, "You are to keep My statutes. You shall not breed together two kinds of your cattle; you shall not sow your field with two kinds of seed, nor wear a garment upon you of two kinds of material mixed together." - rules out a lot of clothes!!
For a more comprehensive list (credit to http://leviticusbans.tumblr.com/post/23730370413/76-things-banned-in-leviticus)
Here’s chapter and verse on a more-or-less comprehensive list of things banned in the Leviticus book of the bible. A decent number of them are punishable by death.
Unless you’ve never done any of them (and 54 to 56 are particularly tricky), perhaps it’s time to lay off quoting 18:22 for a while?
1. Burning any yeast or honey in offerings to God (2:11)
2. Failing to include salt in offerings to God (2:13)
3. Eating fat (3:17)
4. Eating blood (3:17)
5. Failing to testify against any wrongdoing you’ve witnessed (5:1)
6. Failing to testify against any wrongdoing you’ve been told about (5:1)
7. Touching an unclean animal (5:2)
8. Carelessly making an oath (5:4)
9. Deceiving a neighbour about something trusted to them (6:2)
10. Finding lost property and lying about it (6:3)
11. Bringing unauthorised fire before God (10:1)
12. Letting your hair become unkempt (10:6)
13. Tearing your clothes (10:6)
14. Drinking alcohol in holy places (bit of a problem for Catholics, this ‘un) (10:9)
15. Eating an animal which doesn’t both chew cud and has a divided hoof (cf: camel, rabbit, pig) (11:4-7)
16. Touching the carcass of any of the above (problems here for rugby) (11:8)
17. Eating – or touching the carcass of – any seafood without fins or scales (11:10-12)
18. Eating – or touching the carcass of - eagle, the vulture, the black vulture, the red kite, any kind of black kite, any kind of raven, the horned owl, the screech owl, the gull, any kind of hawk, the little owl, the cormorant, the great owl, the white owl, the desert owl, the osprey, the stork, any kind of heron, the hoopoe and the bat. (11:13-19)
19. Eating – or touching the carcass of – flying insects with four legs, unless those legs are jointed (11:20-22)
20. Eating any animal which walks on all four and has paws (good news for cats) (11:27)
21. Eating – or touching the carcass of – the weasel, the rat, any kind of great lizard, the gecko, the monitor lizard, the wall lizard, the skink and the chameleon (11:29)
22. Eating – or touching the carcass of – any creature which crawls on many legs, or its belly (11:41-42)
23. Going to church within 33 days after giving birth to a boy (12:4)
24. Going to church within 66 days after giving birth to a girl (12:5)
25. Having sex with your mother (18:7)
26. Having sex with your father’s wife (18:8)
27. Having sex with your sister (18:9)
28. Having sex with your granddaughter (18:10)
29. Having sex with your half-sister (18:11)
30. Having sex with your biological aunt (18:12-13)
31. Having sex with your uncle’s wife (18:14)
32. Having sex with your daughter-in-law (18:15)
33. Having sex with your sister-in-law (18:16)
34. Having sex with a woman and also having sex with her daughter or granddaughter (bad news for Alan Clark) (18:17)
35. Marrying your wife’s sister while your wife still lives (18:18)
36. Having sex with a woman during her period (18:19)
37. Having sex with your neighbour’s wife (18:20)
38. Giving your children to be sacrificed to Molek (18:21)
39. Having sex with a man “as one does with a woman” (18:22)
40. Having sex with an animal (18:23)
41. Making idols or “metal gods” (19:4)
42. Reaping to the very edges of a field (19:9)
43. Picking up grapes that have fallen in your vineyard (19:10)
44. Stealing (19:11)
45. Lying (19:11)
46. Swearing falsely on God’s name (19:12)
47. Defrauding your neighbour (19:13)
48. Holding back the wages of an employee overnight (not well observed these days) (19:13)
49. Cursing the deaf or abusing the blind (19:14)
50. Perverting justice, showing partiality to either the poor or the rich (19:15)
51. Spreading slander (19:16)
52. Doing anything to endanger a neighbour’s life (19:16)
53. Seeking revenge or bearing a grudge (19:18)
54. Mixing fabrics in clothing (19:19)
55. Cross-breeding animals (19:19)
56. Planting different seeds in the same field (19:19)
57. Sleeping with another man’s slave (19:20)
58. Eating fruit from a tree within four years of planting it (19:23)
59. Practising divination or seeking omens (tut, tut astrology) (19:26)
60. Trimming your beard (19:27)
61. Cutting your hair at the sides (19:27)
62. Getting tattoos (19:28)
63. Making your daughter prostitute herself (19:29)
64. Turning to mediums or spiritualists (19:31)
65. Not standing in the presence of the elderly (19:32)
66. Mistreating foreigners – “the foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born” (19:33-34)
67. Using dishonest weights and scales (19:35-36)
68. Cursing your father or mother (punishable by death) (20:9)
69. Marrying a prostitute, divorcee or widow if you are a priest (21:7,13)
70. Entering a place where there’s a dead body as a priest (21:11)
71. Slaughtering a cow/sheep and its young on the same day (22:28)
72. Working on the Sabbath (23:3)
73. Blasphemy (punishable by stoning to death) (24:14)
74. Inflicting an injury; killing someone else’s animal; killing a person must be punished in kind (24:17-22)
75. Selling land permanently (25:23)
76. Selling an Israelite as a slave (foreigners are fine) (25:42)
So from all that - Christians just get 'homosexuality is a sin, they shouldn't be allowed to get married - Leviticus says so!' REALLY!???? I do not, and will not ever understand how you can select which parts matter and which ones you can just ignore. Either the Bible is the word of God & is a literal life instruction to follow, or it's not. If it's not, then what gives anyone the right to blatantly, proudly discriminate against a group of people? You are cherry picking parts of an old book to suit what you want to believe.
I am proud to be part of the generation that will hopefully stand up & say 'enough is enough' and we will not stand for discrimination based on sexual orientation.
This is something i feel really strongly about, and feel so uncomfortable when i see posts on Facebook condemning NZ & proudly saying they are against gay marriage because that's what the Bible says. I am disgusted really. Its like people saying ' I'm not racist but...' and whatever follows is invariably a racist remark.
And that's my soapbox! I have to stop or this could go on forever, if you got this far - well done, and thank you!
Hear hear! A true case of selective deafness.
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