My Axe is Sharpened for Baptist Necks...

This atrocious piece of excrement was written by a heresiarch of the Baptist orientation. However, I really don't think that one is made a Baptist at birth, rather it is a lifestyle that one chooses. One's formation might have a lot to do with it, but...well, anyway, let's fisk, shall we?

What if Christian leaders are wrong about homosexuality? I suppose, much as a newspaper maintains its credibility by setting the record straight, church leaders would need to do the same:

Correction: Despite what you might have read, heard or been taught throughout your churchgoing life, homosexuality is, in fact, determined at birth and is not to be condemned by God's followers.

Obviously if you are a Baptist, you are used to your church being wrong. On most things, as a matter of fact. Now, adding to denial of the Eucharist, Purgatory, Primacy of Peter, etc., is this funny notion that homosexuality is "determined at birth." Really? How does this happen? Does God mysteriously infuse the newborn with pixie dust? Or is the birth experience so traumatic that some poor little boys develop an irrational fear of women?

Birth? Ah, yes! Everything starts at Birth. Life, for instance. I see where "Rev." Buzz is going here. It's SCIENCE, dontcha know? You fun-da-men-tal-ists are denying science with your crazy respect for the unborn and embryonic stem cell research, which has so far led to, well, not a single cure, but it will. This I know. Because the Scientists tell me so.

Based on a few recent headlines, we won't be seeing that admission anytime soon. Last week, U.S. Roman Catholic bishops took the position that homosexual attractions are "disordered" and that gays should live closeted lives of chastity.

And there you have it. In other news, the US Roman Catholic bishops reaffirmed the Nicene Creed.

At the same time, North Carolina's Baptist State Convention was preparing to investigate churches that are too gay-friendly.

Does "Rev." Buzz feel a little threatened perhaps?

Even the more liberal Presbyterian Church (USA) had been planning to put a minister on trial for conducting a marriage ceremony for two women before the charges were dismissed on a technicality.

Wow! Hope even for the Presbyterians, who have always struck me as being about free markets and golf.

All this brings me back to the question: What if we're wrong?

Buzz (I am going to drop the Rev bit, Buzz, it's not really accurate), I have news for you: you are wrong. What you are asking here, in an oh-so-sneaky-look-how-this-includes-me-and-is-not-just-some-east-coast-liberal-thing-but-it-really-is way is "what if you're wrong?" And, truth be told, what you are really saying is "you are wrong."

Religion's only real commodity, after all, is its moral authority.

Bullshit! Bullshit! Bullshit! Sorry for the crudity, but anything more refined does not do justice to this statement. Real religion's prime commodity is Truth. Moral authority is built on truths. Sexual morals are built on what the nature of the human person is.

Come on, Buzz, repeat after me: "Ontology first, then Ethics."

Otherwise you get monsters like Peter Singer. Or Buzz Thomas.

Lose that, and we lose our credibility. Lose credibility, and we might as well close up shop.

Lost is. Now please close up shop. You people lost credibility when you signed on with the fallen angels in their rebellion against God.

It's happened to Christianity before, most famously when we dug in our heels over Galileo's challenge to the biblical view that the Earth, rather than the sun, was at the center of our solar system.

Oh crap, I knew you were going to dig this one up. Why don't you learn the details of the case first? Do I even need to go over the minutiae here? You can read it elsewhere, but if what Buzz here says makes you nod, you have homework to do. Lots of it.

You know the story.

Yes, I do. Too bad you don't.

Galileo was persecuted for what turned out to be incontrovertibly true. For many, especially in the scientific community, Christianity never recovered.

No, Galileo was prosecuted for refusing to teach his erroneous theory as theory.

ERRONEOUS? C'mon, Keilholtz, you are not like that Sungenis idiot? Surely you accept a heliocentric solar system?

Yes, I do, but I accept Kepler's theory of eliptical orbits. Galileo was trotting out the Copernican theory of circular orbits. The Jesuit astronomers CORRECTLY noted that the data did not support Galileo.

Galileo would not accept the data, which, although he had been a brilliant scientist in the past and had a correct intuition, made him a cruddy scientist in this case. Just as a scientist who accepts the scientistic mythology that Buzz has bought, hook, line and sinker, is a cruddy reader of history. Galileo, in spite of his papal patronage and church support for his studies his whole career, stubbornly took the position at odds with the data and called it "science."

If that is not the foundational myth of modern scientism, I don't know what is.

This time, Christianity is in danger of squandering its moral authority by continuing its pattern of discrimination against gays and lesbians in the face of mounting scientific evidence that sexual orientation has little or nothing to do with choice.

Buzz. Let's go over something very basic: repeating something over and over does not count as "mounting scientific evidence." There is not a shred of scientific evidence pointing to the cause of homosexual orientation, as the tendency is commonly called. None.

To the contrary, whether sexual orientation arises as a result of the mother's hormones or the child's brain structure or DNA, it is almost certainly an accident of birth.

There we go with that birth stuff, again. DNA has nothing to do with birth. Can you get that into your little, pea-sized brain? And "almost certainly?" Well, Buzz, what if you're wrong? I am getting the feeling that this possibility has not even entered your mind.

The point is this: Without choice, there can be no moral culpability.

I am glad you learned at least one thing in moral theology. However, I am a heterosexual guy. But you know what? I don't chase skirts, because I have choice in my actions. I know some heterosexual guys who choose to do other things, and they leave their families and "marry" (probably in a Baptist church) a younger floozy, and the cycle starts all over again, until they are just too old to bother.

I think the problem is that Baptists don't have self control. If you people see something that is sexy, you want to have sex with it. And it is not the church's business to tell you to leave the sheep to themselves.

Answer in Scriptures

It is. Too bad you don't know how to read or interpret them.

So, why are so many church leaders (not to mention Orthodox Jewish and Muslim leaders) persisting in their view that homosexuality is wrong despite a growing stream of scientific evidence that is likely to become a torrent in the coming years?

Here we go wtih that "scientific evidence" again. A torrent? If you mean that "repeating the same thing over and over without any data," well, yes it is likely to become a torrent. Mostly because a lot of this "research" will come from psychologists who have already settled on determining truth by popular vote.

The answer is found in Leviticus 18. "You shall not lie with a man as with a woman; it is an abomination."

Leviticus! I knew it. Never mind what St. Paul wrote, we have to point to Leviticus, so that we can trot out some other Old Testament prohibitions to ridicule.

As a former "the Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it" kind of guy, I am sympathetic with any Christian who accepts the Bible at face value.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, there is nothing left for you to do but convict.

But here's the catch. Leviticus is filled with laws imposing the death penalty for everything from eating catfish to sassing your parents.

I knew it!

If you accept one as the absolute, unequivocal word of God, you must accept them all.

Buzz, I am surprised that you weren't considered too dumb to make it through Baptist seminary. My estimation of the Baptists has just fallen a notch. I suppose you are going to accuse us of "not being able to see nuance."

For many of gay America's loudest critics, the results are unthinkable. First, no more football. At least not without gloves. Handling a pig skin is an abomination. Second, no more Saturday games even if you can get a new ball. Violating the Sabbath is a capital offense according to Leviticus. For the over-40 crowd, approaching the altar of God with a defect in your sight is taboo, but you'll have plenty of company because those menstruating or with disabilities are also barred.

Yes, clever. Never mind the New Testament, never mind thousands of years of orthodox Judaic thought on these matters. Never mind making a distinction on matters of doctrine and discipline, etc. etc. etc.

The truth is that mainstream religion has moved beyond animal sacrifice, slavery and the host of primitive rituals described in Leviticus centuries ago. Selectively hanging onto these ancient proscriptions for gays and lesbians exclusively is unfair according to anybody's standard of ethics. We lawyers call it "selective enforcement," and in civil affairs it's illegal.

So, by Buzz's own brilliant legal reasoning, holding on to prohibitions against murder would be selective enforcement as well, if we were to allow the eating of shark.

A better reading of Scripture starts with the book of Genesis and the grand pronouncement about the world God created and all those who dwelled in it. "And, the Lord saw that it was good." If God created us and if everything he created is good, how can a gay person be guilty of being anything more than what God created him or her to be?

You see, Buzz, there was this incident in the Garden, where a serpeant tempted Adam and Eve, and now people are still basically good, but fallen. We "miss the mark" of who we are supposed to be. Notice, once again, the ontological basis of sin: it is not a rule book approach, but a yearning for a human ideal that, because of original sin, we can only attain with Grace.

But, not for Buzz. You see, God said "it was good" and absolutely nothing else has happened until those mean people came around last week and started preaching Leviticus. No exodus. No chosen people of Israel. Neither flood, nor prophets. No Hell. No Incarnation. No Passion. No Resurrection.

Buzz, you went to the John Lennon school of Theology, didn't you?

Turning to the New Testament, the writings of the Apostle Paul at first lend credence to the notion that homosexuality is a sin, until you consider that Paul most likely is referring to the Roman practice of pederasty, a form of pedophilia common in the ancient world.

Yes, Buzz, that "Roman" practice of pedophilia. You know, Spillane was a more subtle writer by ten.

Successful older men often took boys into their homes as concubines, lovers or sexual slaves.

"...Just as many successful older Baptists today take third wives. In fact, I will be officiating at one of those "weddings" this afternoon!"

Today, such sexual exploitation of minors is no longer tolerated.

Until that "torrent of scientific evidence" comes out to show us that this is OK, too.

The point is that the sort of long-term, committed, same-sex relationships that are being debated today are not addressed in the New Testament.

Neither was dropping atomic bombs. Buzz, are you seeing the problems that stem from a lack of magisterium? By the way, I am not even going to nibble on your goofball exegesis of St. Paul.

It distorts the biblical witness to apply verses written in one historical context (i.e. sexual exploitation of children) to contemporary situations between two monogamous partners of the same sex. Sexual promiscuity is condemned by the Bible whether it's between gays or straights. Sexual fidelity is not.

This is the rule book approach: the manual doesn't exactly condemn this in the words of today, so it must be alright. Buzz, you need to sit down and ask yourself some basic questions: what does it mean to be human? What is the purpose of human sexuality?

What would Jesus do?

What does Jesus do? He calls you to repent and to come into the True Church and get your mind out of the toilet.

For those who have lingering doubts, dust off your Bibles and take a few hours to reacquaint yourself with the teachings of Jesus. You won't find a single reference to homosexuality. There are teachings on money, lust, revenge, divorce, fasting and a thousand other subjects, but there is nothing on homosexuality. Strange, don't you think, if being gay were such a moral threat?

It's there in the lust section, if you weren't such a blind literalist. You just need to see nuance.

On the other hand, Jesus spent a lot of time talking about how we should treat others. First, he made clear it is not our role to judge. It is God's. ("Judge not lest you be judged." Matthew 7:1) And, second, he commanded us to love other people as we love ourselves.

If you turn this last one into a defense of hippy free love, you are hopeless. I am not sure if that is what you are doing, but since you miss almost every nuance in Scripture I do not think that you can distinguish between the types of love. Therefore, I can come to no other conclusion but that you are into the summer of love. Dirty Hippy Baptist.

So, I ask you. Would you want to be discriminated against? Would you want to lose your job, housing or benefits because of something over which you had no control?

As I said, I have control over my actions. It takes Grace, though. I also would not object if someone were to loose their housing because they turned their house into a brothel.

Better yet, would you like it if society told you that you couldn't visit your lifelong partner in the hospital or file a claim on his behalf if he were murdered?

What about friendship, Buzz? You could make these same claims on close, non-sexual friends. Why is it always about sex with you people? And don't say that it isn't all about sex, because if you take the sex out of your homosex relationships, they ain't so special anymore and wouldn't need all the fuss.

The suffering that gay and lesbian people have endured at the hands of religion is incalculable, but they can look expectantly to the future for vindication. Scientific facts, after all, are a stubborn thing.

Even when they don't exist!

Even our religious beliefs must finally yield to them as the church in its battle with Galileo ultimately realized.

No, circular orbits are still wrong. Period.

But for religion, the future might be ominous. Watching the growing conflict between medical science and religion over homosexuality is like watching a train wreck from a distance. You can see it coming for miles and sense the inevitable conclusion, but you're powerless to stop it. The more church leaders dig in their heels, the worse it's likely to be.

Yawn. I am so glad that we have Buzz to tell us what the future of medical science will bring.

Oliver "Buzz" Thomas is a Baptist minister and author of an upcoming book, 10 Things Your Minister Wants to Tell You (But Can't Because He Needs the Job).

The alternative title is "Martyrdom, Schmartyrdom! Sacrifice Truth to Hold on to a Good Position as a Pharisee!"

This title tells you all you need to know about Buzz Thomas.

Posted by erik at November 20, 2006 10:24 AM