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Friends,
I have seen, in a number of places ranging from LJ entries, to Letters to The Editor, to comic strips, attempts to label homophobic Christians hypocritical for citing Leviticus 18:22 as a proof-text against same sex marriage while gleefully washing their bacon-wrapped shrimp down with their ham and lobster milkshakes.
While this seems like a nice "Gotcha!" the truth is that their non-compliance with the dietary laws is not inconsistent with Christian Scripture. Acts 10:9-16 narrates a vision in which Peter is shown all kinds of non-kosher animals and told, by God, to "Kill and Eat." When he protests, God chides him saying "Do not call anything that I have made impure." This passage pretty much releases Christians from any observance of the Dietary Laws.
Thus, their pork-eating does not constitute a reasonable basis for an accusation of hypocrisy.
However, given that most of these flaming homophobes are on board for the whole Republican agenda, including the cutting of taxes at the expense of social programs, we need only look ahead to chapter 19 to find a far more serious hypocrisy.
Leviticus 19:9-10 instructs us not to harvest our entire crops, but to leave some behind for the poor, the widow and the orphan. In modern terms, what this means is that we are not free to keep every last penny we earn, some must be held out for the benefit of the poor. The "I've got mine, Jack, get your hands off of my stack" mentality of the same people who are content to drive Leviticus 18:22 into the ground, flies right in the face of Leviticus 19:9-10.
So they ARE in fact hypocrites. But not because they eat shrimp.
I have seen, in a number of places ranging from LJ entries, to Letters to The Editor, to comic strips, attempts to label homophobic Christians hypocritical for citing Leviticus 18:22 as a proof-text against same sex marriage while gleefully washing their bacon-wrapped shrimp down with their ham and lobster milkshakes.
While this seems like a nice "Gotcha!" the truth is that their non-compliance with the dietary laws is not inconsistent with Christian Scripture. Acts 10:9-16 narrates a vision in which Peter is shown all kinds of non-kosher animals and told, by God, to "Kill and Eat." When he protests, God chides him saying "Do not call anything that I have made impure." This passage pretty much releases Christians from any observance of the Dietary Laws.
Thus, their pork-eating does not constitute a reasonable basis for an accusation of hypocrisy.
However, given that most of these flaming homophobes are on board for the whole Republican agenda, including the cutting of taxes at the expense of social programs, we need only look ahead to chapter 19 to find a far more serious hypocrisy.
Leviticus 19:9-10 instructs us not to harvest our entire crops, but to leave some behind for the poor, the widow and the orphan. In modern terms, what this means is that we are not free to keep every last penny we earn, some must be held out for the benefit of the poor. The "I've got mine, Jack, get your hands off of my stack" mentality of the same people who are content to drive Leviticus 18:22 into the ground, flies right in the face of Leviticus 19:9-10.
So they ARE in fact hypocrites. But not because they eat shrimp.
