On Facebook this morning, a socially and politically conservative cousin, with whom I gotten into relatively heated, but not personal, discussions about religion and politics, "liked" a column from a year ago that ends with the quote in the title. The piece is entitled Why Homosexuality Is Not Like Other Sins and was written by Jonathan Parnell at a blog called desiringGod. It is a pretty standard explanation as to why good Christians have to hate on TEH Gay and just can't treat us, you know, equally - it's not homosexuality they're against, oh no, it's just sin:
We are against any sin that restrains people from everlasting joy in God, and homosexual practice just gets all the press because, at this cultural moment, it’s the main sin that is so freshly endorsed in our context by the powers that be.
You see, what makes homosexuality different is that it's "celebrated." Parnell quotes 1Corinthians - relying on a letter from Paul because we all know the rabbi Jesus of Nazareth had nothing to say about homosexuality:
Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.
It’s not the only sin mentioned, but it is different from all the rest, at least right now. At this moment in history, contrary to the other sins listed here, homosexuality is celebrated by our larger society with pioneering excitement.
and claims none of these other sins are celebrated the way homosexuality allegedly is. Really Mr. Parnell? These other sins aren't celebrated in our culture? Are you in the same country I am? Follow me below the squiggle for a little look at this dubious "logic."
Let's look at this list of sins that are included along with homosexuality in this translation of Paul's letter. Again they are:
the sexually immoral, idolaters, adulterers, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, and swindlers
I'll give the good Mr. Parnell thievery and swindling. Outside of wage theft and Wall Street, we don't normally celebrate thieves and swindlers. Score one for his side. But I don't think he's got any leg to stand on with the rest.
Sexually immoral/adulterers - Let's look at these two together. Certainly Mr. Parnell is not in favor of the sexual revolution, and brings up fornication and adultery as specific negative behaviors in our society. Now one could argue these forms of sexual immorality - and more - are celebrated all the time by our popular culture, but that's something else I don't think Mr. Parnell or his readers would find a positive. But are those the only kinds of sexual immorality? We can turn to the words of that rabbi himself, the gospel of Mark, for some guidance:
What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder.
That's right, Jesus was really against divorce. In fact in the Catholic and Anglican churches, divorced people cannot get remarried - and are considered adulterers if they do marry otherwise. But many "Christian" churches have no problem with remarrying divorced people, so every Saturday we see celebrations of a "sinful lifestyle choice" in church after church. Hell, we've gotten so comfortable with divorce (which was still discussed
sotto voce when I was a little Catholic kid in the 70s in Massachusetts) that the Republicans put the first divorced man into the White House and he's considered a near saint today. Hell, in 2012 the thrice-married serial adulterer Newt Gingrich was held up as a potential "family values" Presidential candidate and protector of marriage.
As for the fornicators, well every day men and women march down to the courthouse or City Hall for a good old-fashioned civil ceremony, which again is not considered binding in many churches. Those people, if they haven't been married before, are fornicators, yet we sure as heck celebrate their marriages and no "Christians" are arguing they should be able to ignore those marriages because they weren't in a church.
Idolaters - This is my favorite sin we don't celebrate in America. 'Cause I'm pretty sure quite a few Protestants have told me point blank that having statuary in Catholic churches means we're idolaters (never mind we weren't actually taught the statues were gods). Yet we, as a society, show so much respect and deference for the Catholic Church that its leadership has never been held fully accountable for conducting the largest and longest criminal conspiracy in human history.
Even expanding outside the more literal definition of idolatry, does Mr. Parnell not understand that the same First Amendment that enables him to publish his thoughts not only protects heresy and blasphemy, but was the foundation for Joseph Smith, L. Ron Hubbard, Joel Osteen, Rick Perry and untold other self-appointed "pastors," "bishops" and "ministers" to create new churches out of whole cloth. And we celebrate that right so much that we're now seeing a rush to enshrine it as more important than the values of fairness and equality.
The Greedyand Revilers - Revile being defined by Dictionary.com as
to assail with contemptuous or opprobrious language; address or speak of abusively.
Seriously? In a culture that gives Donald Trump and Ann Coulter (among so many others) whatever soapbox they want to push their trash and sell some books? Please.
Drunkards - We don't normally celebrate alcoholics, that's true, (although Dudley Moore got an Academy Award nomination for playing a lovable one in Arthur) but allow me to point the good Mr. Parnell to Las Vegas and New Orleans as places where the culture of getting good and sh*t-faced is alive and well, or to the multi-billion dollar alcoholic beverage industry that is happily supplying the liquor, wine and beer needs of Americans from coast to coast.
I get that conservatives need homosexuality to be worse than, or at least different from, other sins in order to justify their bigotry and desire for discrimination while arguing against the same when it impacts them. But the truth is that every single one of us, every single American, lives a "lifestyle" that is considered immoral to some other American. It's the price we pay for living in a multicultural society and the legacy of what may have been the most valuable Enlightenment concept embraced by the Founding Fathers - realizing that forcing religious orthodoxy on a people is doomed to failure and leads to disaster. The decades of war and slaughter driven by religious bigotry after the Reformation were far more recent history to those men and the model they created was supposed to prevent the very kind of religious discrimination the Right wants enshrined for LGBT people.
Look if Mr. Parnell wants to believe that I'm a sinner because I'm gay, I am absolutely happy to let him do so. He can consider any marriage I might enter to be an abomination to his God and absolutely refuse to send me a gift; I'll get over it. But if Mr. Parnell wants respect for his religious lifestyle choices he can damn well give me the same respect for my moral lifestyle choices.