Those Anti-Gay , Shrimp-Eating Fundies and their Shrimp-Eating.

[richardf8]

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.

Comments

[bluerain.livejournal.com]

When I cite the shrimp passage, it isn't to try and provy hypocrisy.

It's to show how stupidly out of date Leviticus is.

[richardf8]

We'll have to have coffee sometime, and some animated discussion.
And don't feel that I'm pinning you to the mat for something you wrote 5 years ago -- I like that storyline enough that it is linked to directly from both a LiveJournal Entry of mine AND my web-site.

The bits with the stoning and the burning of the fat from the protuberance of the liver are, indeed, outdated, as is the outlawing of Wool/Linen blends. However, even from the passages regarding sacrifice we learn things like: Community Barbecues are a wonderful bonding experience, but no one should be required to bring more than they can afford to them, and the meat should not be eaten when its been out long enough to get rancid.

However, taken as a whole, Leviticus has as its priority the construction of a society that balances justice and mercy, provides care for the poor, impartiality in the courts, goodwill among neighbors, and equitable treatment of foreigners. It is quite a progressive document, and in many ways, with a few notable exceptions, a better liberal platform than anything the DNC is offering up these days.

As for 18:22, you can find my understanding of what the obsession with that is all about right here.

As a final note, if Republicans keep gaining high office, the shrimp passage itself may even assume more relevance: as more mercury is allowed to be released into the environment, scavengers and tertiary consumers like shrimp and crawdads are likely to contain quite high concentrations of it.

[kevinjdog.livejournal.com]

As for 18:22, you can find my understanding of what the obsession with that is all about right here.

There was an age when reproduction was something the world desperately needed, considering that infant mortality was about 80% guaranteed. Since a dead baby can't harvest crops or help fight encroaching enemies, making more babies would raise the probability of a higher population. Therefore, Mister, if you even think about wasting precious seminal fluids on Brian (picking a Monty Python Irish-Jewish name) instead of on Rachael, your ass is grass.

We really can't comprehend the sort of society that had to stay together and protect its existence so heavily in order to survive. It was a different world than today. There is no permanent Nicene council out creating Torah/Tanakh/New Testament 3.0 to give us precious updates to our code of life, so we have different people picking and choosing passages, even though religious leaders will tell you that every single contradictory passage is valid. (Crap, my Grandmother, a devout Baptist, would always tell me you don't even have to go two chapters into Genesis to find glaring contradictions.)

The Bible is not, by itself, a growth-oriented religious model. Like any code or set of postulates, it's a potential starting point. The trouble with orthodoxy of any kind is that it insists that it be the ending point as well, and that is when progressive thought and adaptation for our survival will completely die out.

[richardf8]

The Bible is not, by itself, a growth-oriented religious model. Like any code or set of postulates, it's a potential starting point. The trouble with orthodoxy of any kind is that it insists that it be the ending point as well, and that is when progressive thought and adaptation for our survival will completely die out.

This is totally and completely on the money. The problem with fundamentalism is that it would rather regress than adapt. It is afflicted by a false nostalgia for goodle days that never existed.

There is no permanent Nicene council out creating Torah/Tanakh/New Testament 3.0 to give us precious updates to our code of life

At least within Judaism this is not the case. Tanakh (which includes Torah) is followed by the Mishnah, the Talmud, the Shulchan Oruch, right into the contemporary age with Responsa literature from the various movements. So the Jewish tradition is constantly getting "service packs," to continue your software versioning analogy.

so we have different people picking and choosing passages, even though religious leaders will tell you that every single contradictory passage is valid.

Proof-texting is simply bad exgesis. Because of these contradictions a more gestalt approach is necessary to arrive at reasonable conclusions. The bible, despite what evangelical fundamentalists like to think, is NOT a step by step guide to daily living. Indeed, it is more of a koan by virtue of those contradictions, and one is intended, I think, to struggle with the text. It results in varied readings, and forces one to look for overall precepts instead of niggling details. In Jewish tradition, the tension between the "letter of the law" reading and the "overall precept" is almost always resolved in favor of the overall precept.

Christian movements, instead of asking what the text is trying to say, rather start out with a thesis they wish to demonstrate, and support it with whot proof-texts they can find. So it is with doctrines like the trinity, transubstantiation, opposition to abortion, and so on. This process of imposing meaning on the text rather than deriving meaning from it is called "isogesis."

[athelind.livejournal.com]

Personally, I like to point out that in the New Testament, Jesus doesn't have a lot to say about homosexuality. He saves his ire for religious hypocrites who pray loudly so that everyone can hear how pious they are; for those who commercialize religion; and for those who think their wealth is virtuous.

[unzammechat.livejournal.com]

Hehe!

I also rather like the "Thou shalt not kill" thing in there. ^^

And this entry may be of interest, but I can't remember where I found the link... (given the vast number of informed religious political people out there, there's a good chance I got the info from you ^^) so hopefully I'm not being redundant:
http://www.livejournal.com/community/furrychristians/128716.html

[c-eagle.livejournal.com]

Very lively posting! :D

[davidfcooper.livejournal.com]

Leviticus 18:22 forbids men from having sex with other men as they do with women. And how do men have sex with women? Vaginal intercourse. Since men do not have vaginas the verse is outlawing an impossibility and thus is null and void.

[richardf8]

LOL

[childings.livejournal.com]

Wow, I never thought about that!

[davidfcooper.livejournal.com]

Ask any woman who has had both vaginal and anal intercourse & she'll tell you they're not the same. It's like the proverbial apples & oranges comparison.

[deckardcanine.livejournal.com]

The best thing about Catholics, in my mind, has been their disproportionate concern for the poor. In most modern elections, the majority of Catholics voters picked the Democrat. This time, however, some 52% of them disappointed me. Confound those lobbyists in the churches for skewing priorities.

[richardf8]

Alas that chief among these lobbyists is the Pope himself. He has been pushing the abortion issue very hard, and it is on that that one sees a lot of the crossover. The cardinals and archbishops too have been turning American elections into a single issue circus.

The Catholic Laity in America has always had a tendency to do the right thing, even in violation of Church Doctrine, but with bishops issuing orders that someone who votes for a pro-choice candidate needn't bother seeking communion, doctrine is becoming harder to ignore.

[deckardcanine.livejournal.com]

Bishops have had a policy against speaking for or against certain candidates. I agree with the Catholic groups who lament a decline in the practice of this policy.

To me, it's not the doctrine that's at fault; it's the prioritization. My closest Catholic friends decided with me that the collateral damage in Iraq was a more detrimental form of "abortion."

[visservoldemort.livejournal.com]

Simply out of curiousity, do you not feel that the future years of a more democratic, stable and ethical government that Iraq stands to gain from this war more than outweight the, admittedly substantial, collateral damage from the war?

The only difference is whether or not we want to be responsible for more damage by inaction or less, albeit a great deal, by our own action. I think events have certainly shown that Iraq is taking a turn for the better in terms of stability and future democratic governance, and for the life of me I cannot see this as anything but an extremely positive thing, especially considering the repercussions its having on the rest of the Middle East.

[deckardcanine.livejournal.com]

I am of the belief that ends do not justify means. As for whether the remaining Middle Easterners prosper from the change, I think the jury is still out.

[visservoldemort.livejournal.com]

Some ends do justify some means. I'm sure you wouldn't think that any action that fails to live up in its entirety to the relevant ideal is out of the question, regardless of the possible good to be gained from the end. No one lives there life like that, and no government, even in the best of possible scenarios could operate alongst those guidelines. A slightly more accurate statement might be that "I am of the belief that these means do not justify this end."

As for the second sentence, do you feel that the Iraq War has been a positive force for democracy in the Middle East? Given recent events in Lebanon and Iraq, I think the evidence is certainly pointing in the direction that it is. Your thoughts?

[deckardcanine.livejournal.com]

On further reflection, there are a few very exceptional cases where I would admit a belief that the ends combined with intent justified the means.

I have read some signs of a democracy shakily getting onto its legs in Iraq, but I don't trust it to last. Their new leader could easily become a tyrant, and the Administration has been very reluctant to reduce its own influence. Hardly a day goes by without another mass killing reported. Perhaps it will start looking like the French Revolution.

As for Lebanon, I'm not much aware how it was before, or even how it's been in the last couple weeks.

[richardf8]

Watching you and Deckard have this debate is quite interesting.

As for Lebanon, it is a situation I monitor with bated breath. I do not think that we can attribute it to Iraq, however. I think the death of Arafat has more to do with it. I think Bush's policies have a greater potential to monkeywrench the good that can come of it than to facilitate it. He is, first and foremost, and oilman, and therefore a lapdog to the Saudi Crown. I do not think his protestations of friendship to Israel are sincere. He is one who will embrace you with his right arm only to stab you with his left.

Like Deckard's, my confidence in the nascent democracy in Iraq is limited. We have exerted to much influence over the process for it to be fully accepted, and the tesions beneath the surface are high. We cannot hold our fingers in the dyke forever.

[visservoldemort.livejournal.com]

Mm. I suppose that would be the logical thing to say. But it's always struck me as much more fun to be able to legitimately attack even the most devout Christian fundamentalist as a "New Age, decadent heretic with no respect for traditional values!". I find the irony amusing.

...and thus served the inflammatory comment of the month. More seriously, Leviticus 19:9-10 is an excellent commentary on the importance of fiscal restraint and our elected leaders would do well to take notice.