Representative of the quality of her argument is this passage: “It probably goes without saying that the phrase ‘gay marriage’ does not appear in the Bible at all.”
That “probably” is an unintentional, comical touch. The ancient Hebrews were more advanced than we are in this respect: they didn’t waste time tiresomely pondering whether a man and a man or a woman and a woman could marry each other.
GetReligion.org’s Mollie Hemingway penned two capable critiques, Sola scriptura minus the scriptura and What’s the Standard?
The American Conservative’s Daniel Larison also weighed in concerning Newsweek editor Jon Meacham’s vacuous remarks expressing his poor theology.
Courtesy of Baylor University’s Prof. Francis Beckwith, who notes other good responses, we find Rob Bowman’s solid critique at Religious Researcher.
Bowman particularly responds to Miller’s dismissive remarks about Leviticus.
Gay activists cite Leviticus with frequency and stupidity. Using analysis fit only for a bumper sticker, they cite the only passage they know: one which forbids shellfish.
Miller follows their shallow example, writing: “Most of us no longer heed Leviticus on haircuts or blood sacrifices; our modern understanding of the world has surpassed its prescriptions. Why would we regard its condemnation of homosexuality with more seriousness than we regard its advice, which is far lengthier, on the best price to pay for a slave?”
Bowman responds:
In the very chapters condemning homosexual acts (in 18:22 and 20:13), Leviticus also condemns incest (18:6-18; 20:11-12, 14, 17, 19-21), adultery (18:20; 20:10), child-sacrifice (18:21; 20:2-5), and bestiality (18:23; 20:15-16). The texts condemning homosexual acts are sandwiched immediately between texts condemning child-sacrifice and bestiality in chapter 18 (18:21-23) and between texts condemning different types of incest in chapter 20 (20:12-14).
In the intervening chapter, Leviticus contains what used to be its most famous injunction: “you shall love your neighbor as yourself” (19:18), quoted by Jesus as the second of the two greatest commandments (Matt. 22:39; Mark 12:31, 33; cf. Luke 10:27).
He charges that the main problem with Miller’s “stock objection" to Leviticus' teaching about homosexual conduct "is not that it pays attention to their context but that it does not pay sufficient, close attention to their context.”
Miller's appeal to the "length" of biblical passages as a measure of their authority is also sophomoric. The gravity of the acts under discussion was so obvious to their audience that the biblical authors would have had no need to go into the obscene details.
The journalistic take on Miller’s essay is also devastating.
“It is no exaggeration to say the piece was an embarrassment,” remarked GetReligion.org’s Mollie Hemingway. She said pieces like Miller’s essay have helped make Newsweek “more or less the laughingstock of the journalism world.”
Referencing Miller’s essay, she accused Newsweek editor Jon Meacham of “trading journalism for hackery and propaganda."
"There was precisely no one provoked to think in any meaningful sense by that last cover story. People were simply provoked to drop subscriptions or otherwise think less of Newsweek. It didn’t engage the Scriptural arguments in favor of traditional marriage fairly or honestly. The only people who would even remotely enjoy that story or find it thoughtful are people who were already inclined to believe it.”
While Newsweek has acknowledged its critics, it remains to be seen whether it will provide a platform for a competent advocate of marriage as a union between man and woman.
As evidence this platform might not be forthcoming, we note comments made at the annual conference of the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association, held in Washington, D.C. in August.
There David Waters, editor of the “On Faith” blog which appears on the Newsweek web site, urged reporters to avoid prominent Christian leaders and focus only on “real people.”
According to the Culture and Media Institute, at the conference “the discussion quickly degenerated into a seminar on how journalists can ‘conquer’ the religion debate to advance the homosexual political agenda.”
Waters remarked:
I think, as journalists, our No. 1 obligation is obviously to the truth, and if we’re going to be about the truth then we have to fight and we have to fight for space and for time to tell the right story and to tell the real story, and I think the best way to go about that, at least I’ve found in my experience with my own reporting and with other reporters, is to take time and not go to the Pat Robertsons and the James Dobsons of the world but to find the real people who are really struggling with this issue.
People who are “struggling with this issue” are people of no clear opinion. Waters advocates shutting out those clearly opposed to his agenda, a plausible but wicked strategy. He would make the muddle-headed out to be moderates and reserve clarity only for his political allies in advocacy, who could then define the range of acceptable debate.
Another speaker at the conference, defrocked United Methodist minister Jimmy Creech, advised that journalists not make themselves “complicit” in popularizing the comments of religious leaders Creech considers to be “fringe” and “radical.”
Newsweek is quickly learning that there are real people who are not “struggling with this issue” and who don’t want to pay for predictable and poorly-argued religious opinions (which blogs provide for free).
Its future does not look bright.
Last year, the magazine cut its subscriber number guarantees to advertisers from 3.1 million to 2.6 million. Now the Wall Street Journal reports that Newsweek “could subtract anywhere from 500,000 to one million copies from its current guarantee of 2.6 million.”
They say money follows quality. Judging from recent events, Newsweek is missing both.
Addendum:
Newsweek's website has posted a response, awkwardly titled
No Case for Homosexuality in Bible, written by Joseph Bottum, John Mark Reynolds, and Bruce D. Porter. Will Newsweek publish this in its print edition?
11 comments:
Your blog is well written and you seem very reasonable. I have not read more of your writing, but I have a question which perhaps you can answer:
If those passages in the Bible denouce homosexuality so vigourusly, sandwiching them between child sacrifice and beastiality, how can you be comfortable allowing homosexuality to be legal at all? Shouldn't we persecuate gays with the same passion we go after practitioners of those other awful crimes? If so, your argument is not against gay marriage, you are simply anti-gay. If not, you are admitting that in a free, democratic, secular government, we do not need to blindly follow a poorly translated, centuries old collection of documents.
Please explain.
I am not repelled by the idea of anti-sodomy laws, which let us recall were constitutional until an ill-reasoned Supreme Court decision of 2002.
A recent poll showed 37 percent of Americans still support such laws, though I am enough a child of my age to remain skeptical of them.
Further, such opposition is not only religious, not that there's anything wrong with that.
Ignoring your unwarranted sneer against Scripture,
several secular arguments against both sodomy and same-sex marriage can be made, and are presented well enough elsewhere.
As for anti-gay, I must confess that I see "gay" as socially constructed, in much the same way I see "goth." While I do not define such people by their vices, I do not affirm such vices in them and think they waste our time and degrade our society when they try to instill their subculture's predilections into law.
On the Leviticus argument again: What the conservatives haven't addressed is the "pick and choose" argument. Why do we follow the admonitions about sodomy but not about shellfish? The key question here is why, but what you and the conservatives keep trying to change it to is what.
We've already addressed what over and over again. What's banned is sodomy, child sacrifice, shellfish and a number of other things. But why do we eat shellfish (which should be illegal because it's gross) and yet argue about sodomy. How do you address this?
I agree that we should focus on the trivium, and as a high school English teacher, that's what I do. But the ability to spot logical fallacies is what led to science and led us to begin questioning a book that tells us some guy was resurrected while at the same time stating that Caesar and Herod occupied their thrones at the same time. Shouldn't we scrutinize any theology based on such a flawed account?
As far as gay being a social construct: call it what you want, the fact is gay people, or people who are of that persuasion, or feminine acting males who are not sexually attracted to females have always existed. Everyone on the academic left and right always refers back to the "creation" of the gay identity in the late 19th century. To intimate that there was no consciousness of this before then is absurd. There are written accounts of what we would today call gay clubs spanning the historical record. I don't believe it is merely a social construct, because every single culture has some way of responding to the phenomenon.
Honestly, with the amount of reasoning you show on this site, your opposition to homosexuality is mystifying.
But why do we eat shellfish (which should be illegal because it's gross) and yet argue about sodomy. How do you address this?
Old Testament dietary restrictions are explicitly revoked in the New Testament, while Old Testament morality regarding sexual activity in general, and sodomy in particular, are explicitly reasserted.
"Old Testament morality regarding sexual activity in general, and sodomy in particular, are explicitly reasserted."
Touche. I suppose this leads me to the my real question, which is: What is the logical argument for a biblical basis for morality? Surely there are other equally functional moral codes in existence, ones which have built entire civilizations that we coexist with harmoniously and travesties have been committed in the name of all manner of moral traditions, just ask Socrates. Every tradition contains some inexplicable and often mystifying strictures. Shouldn't the test of a truly just society include in some way its ability to incorporate new findings about what is just and unjust into its moral code? So why Christian theology and not Greek theology? Why not Buddhism, or Taoism? What about paganism? If the argument is one based on faith, then that just leaves the door open to whatever people want to believe is true regardless of evidence to the contrary. At its worst this can lead to the kind of insolence that caused impudent laity with great charisma to claim the mantle of God for themselves and so begin the protestant tradition.
Faith is not a good basis for public policy.
So why the Bible?
Josef writes:
"To intimate that there was no consciousness of this before then is absurd. There are written accounts of what we would today call gay clubs spanning the historical record."
Well, we'd call them gay clubs, but that's putting a current category on a situation in which the label has some overlap, but is not the self-understanding of the subculture or the wider society.
I simply am skeptical that modern "psychology of sexuality" has much merit. It was horribly politicized by that fraud Kinsey and his licentious followers.
To further explain: Let's say self-mutilation and intricate body piercing is typically associated with the "goth" U.S. subculture.
Are we then to label body-piercing tribesmen of the 11th century as "goth" with accuracy? Obviously not.
Further, does the historical practice of self-mutilation make self-mutilation right and worthy of respect under law? No.
I suggest the practice of sodomy across the ages is similarly varied, with our age being particularly dull-witted about it.
"Honestly, with the amount of reasoning you show on this site, your opposition to homosexuality is mystifying."
Which forms of consensual sexual behavior do you think can be rationally opposed? Are you mystified about all standards of sexual ethics?
I oppose sodomy, not "homosexuality," whatever that is. I am equal-opportunity, in that I think heterosexuals also should be criticized for sex acts we associate with gays and lesbians. The latter just happen to be more aggressive politically and culturally.
A few brief philosophical arguments against homosexual marriage and homosexual acts:
The bodies of men and women are complementary. Their physical union normally begets the next generation, making such unions worthy of special respect and regulation under societal norms. A right to marry derives primarily from the nature of the human body, and only secondarily from the agreement of wills. The rightness of sexual relations likewise must respect the nature of the body, and those acts which violate the body's order are worthy of rebuke.
Further, men should conduct themselves like men, and women like women. Effeminacy is a vice in a man, as mannishness is in a woman. This applies somewhat to comportment, where it is a minor vice. In sex acts the matter is more grave because sex is more important. There, people should not use others or be themselves used in ways more befitting the opposite sex.
Since I already raised the "social construct" concept, let's note that sexed human bodies have far more consistency across time than psychological interpretations of sexual or personal attraction. They are thus a sounder basis for ethical and legal reasoning.
And while "gender roles" obviously vary from culture to culture, these roles do have a kind of merit to them. Just because standards of nudity and modesty vary doesn't mean modesty isn’t a virtue.
"Shouldn't the test of a truly just society include in some way its ability to incorporate new findings about what is just and unjust into its moral code? So why Christian theology and not Greek theology?"
First, let's note that the “new findings about what is just and unjust” are in dispute. Obviously, I think the rise of gay activism is generally a new form of injustice.
Second, let’s note that Christian societies have incorporated new understandings of justice into their moral code, even understandings inspired by pagan Greek theology (philosophy, that is, not mythology). Sometimes, probably most of the time, these reforms were new understandings based from within the Christian tradition.
Christian theology is relevant because the United States is part of Christian civilization and most US citizens are Christians in some form or another. Why our minority of secularists, atheists, and loud non-Christians should have veto power over Christian rhetoric and logic in public life and argument is unclear to me.
“If the argument is one based on faith, then that just leaves the door open to whatever people want to believe is true regardless of evidence to the contrary.”
The argument is based on, not faith in general, but Christian faith specifically. I don’t foresee mass conversions to Islam or ancient polytheism.
And faith, in the Christian understanding, is not based in disregarding contrary evidence. That’s a casual skeptic’s rhetorical ploy. Faith is based on assent to God, and treats contrary evidence as either a matter to be synthesized and clarified by faith or a matter by which false understandings of faith may be corrected.
“Faith is not a good basis for public policy.
So why the Bible?”
The issue is whether Christian belief, ethics, and customs are a good basis for public policy, not necessarily the Bible in particular.
While I certainly don't think excessive secularism should limit Christian discussion in public life, neither should Christian discussion fail to engage non-Christians.
Christian civilization’s incorporation of pagan and Muslim philosophy helped beget a form of argument today called natural law theory. Great Christian thinkers recognized that there are “equally functional moral codes” in other societies, simply because all societies draw from a common human nature.
If you are interested in such philosophical arguments Christians have used to discuss and support their ethics and laws in debates with non-Christians, I suggest you start with natural law theory.
Indeed, “natural law” is one of the subject groupings on this very blog, though my coverage of the topic tends to be specialized and not basic. Princeton’s Robert P. George is one contemporary thinker who brings natural law theory to bear upon contemporary issues, as is J. Budziszewski.
I wonder what you do consider a good basis for public policy? In the issue of moral policy specifically, it’s clear to me that our radical friends tend to cite either unrestrained desire (which they often confuse with liberty) or a simplistic and fanatical form of equality. Many also display an undertone of animosity against orthodox forms of Christianity, another obviously bad basis.
"Further, men should conduct themselves like men, and women like women."
And what conduct defines a man vs. a woman? This has changed a lot over time, which conduct do you advocate specifically? I don't want generalizations. I think you're making an assumption that everyone is the same and that the two genders don't share some of each other's attributes. It would be nice if the world were that easy to comprehend but it isn't.
"Well, we'd call them gay clubs, but that's putting a current category on a situation in which the label has some overlap, but is not the self-understanding of the subculture or the wider society."
Yes, I'll give you that, but the point I was trying to make is not that consciousness hasn't changed profoundly, because that is a given. The point I'm making is that the propensity has always existed. The changing of consciousness did not create people who act a certain way.
"It was horribly politicized by that fraud Kinsey and his licentious followers."
I've noticed that traditionalists care a lot more about Kinsey than most gay people I know. Also, licentious by your standards. Furthermore, the fact that Kinsey's research was flawed (and boring to read) has nothing to do with the increased gay consciousness during the twentieth century. That movement was well on its way before Kinsey, and I believe could get along just fine (if not better) without him. Kinsey got what he wanted: attention.
"Which forms of consensual sexual behavior do you think can be rationally opposed? Are you mystified about all standards of sexual ethics?"
I oppose anything that creates an undue burden on society. Sodomy does not do this. And kids do just fine in non-traditional homes. With that in mind, I still think teenagers are not ready for sex. Telling kids about sex and sexuality is not the same as sexualizing them. On the latter, we sexualize teens far too much. I work with these kids every day, and most of them, deep down, don't really want to be sexually active, they're just not ready. The problem is that they are inundated by culture (and this is nothing new) with the idea that they need to have sex. Boys believe they must in order to be men and girls think it is their duty to submit. I rant about teen sex because, while 'consensual' it risks a very undue burden on society (Sarah Palin failed as a mother, and should not be holding public office, she should be caring for Bristol, who is still a child).
"Christian theology is relevant because the United States is part of Christian civilization and most US citizens are Christians in some form or another."
This is circular reasoning. Since we know that christian civilization is itself a construction, can you demonstrate for me a way in which biblical precepts produce a functionally better society?
"First, let's note that the “new findings about what is just and unjust” are in dispute. Obviously, I think the rise of gay activism is generally a new form of injustice."
Really? So, are you advocating a return to traditional marriage, meaning that it's based entirely on expediency and not love? If that is what you are suggesting, fine, but you are in a significant minority. If, however, you think that love is a necessary component of a good marriage, yet you claim that there is no place for gay unions or even sexuality, you are dooming a certain portion of society to loveless, fraudulent unions. These are not people who just need to pray harder or try harder. Nobody would be stupid enough to choose to be attracted to people of the same gender. If there were a way around it, we would have found it by now.
"I wonder what you do consider a good basis for public policy? In the issue of moral policy specifically, it’s clear to me that our radical friends tend to cite either unrestrained desire (which they often confuse with liberty) or a simplistic and fanatical form of equality. Many also display an undertone of animosity against orthodox forms of Christianity, another obviously bad basis."
I consider a system of ethics, not morals, to be the basis for good public policy. Ethics are something we can all agree on, morals have always created problems. Christianity contains a lot of really good ethical precepts, there is nothing wrong with a legal system based in Christianity, in fact, most of our legal system and ethical consciousness stems from Christian ethics. Jesus was the most prominent member of an intellectual movement that questioned the intrinsic value of humans based on class. That's where we get the notion of equality. It didn't exist before then.
The problem arises when public policy is based on blind adherence to certain passages in a book that is translated poorly and comes from a culture very different from our own and was about a world that looked very different than the world we see today. To cause undue pain and anguish to millions because of a few passages in a book seems very unethical to me.
"And what conduct defines a man vs. a woman? "
Generally speaking: Contingent but respect-worthy social norms in the case of comportment, biology in the case of sexual conduct. In some ways it's another variant on the complementarity.
"This is circular reasoning. Since we know that christian civilization is itself a construction, can you demonstrate for me a way in which biblical precepts produce a functionally better society?"
It's not circular reasoning, it's a prudential justification rather than a principled one. In political argument, there is no need for Americans to justify their entire history to satisfy the latest criticisms of a gabby non-Christian minority.
As for producing a "functionally better society," I have little idea what that is and I do not wish to abuse Scripture to create it.
“So, are you advocating a return to traditional marriage, meaning that it's based entirely on expediency and not love?”
Where did you pick up your definition of traditional marriage? The department of Overused Caricatures?
While I do try to avoid the excesses of the Romantic conception of marriage, I also doubt that love was absent from cultures based on arranged marriage or expediency. (It is very reasonable to marry for expediency in a pre-modern society where economic opportunity is scarce, and marriages of convenience can be perfected in love too.)
It is worth noting that I reject the idea that love is an emotion. Rather, affection and sexual attraction ought to assist the virtue of Love, which is to will the true good of another.
“yet you claim that there is no place for gay unions or even sexuality, you are dooming a certain portion of society to loveless, fraudulent unions.”
How am I the agent of doom? I wouldn’t force homosexuals to marry members of the opposite sex. I think lots of people are unfit for marriage, and I think virginity and/or the single life has merit.
Further, under the ethical definition of love, sodomy is not a loving act.
If the complementarity of the human sexes is a necessary part of marriage and ethical sexual relations, every same-sex union, legal or physical, is fraudulent and/or hateful towards the body. Homosexuals are frustrated by nature and God, not by a society that refuses to pretend they’re equal.
“These are not people who just need to pray harder or try harder. Nobody would be stupid enough to choose to be attracted to people of the same gender.”
You are romanticizing. Lots of people indulge in vice out of meanness, and I’d wager that porn and gay propaganda are generating more practitioners of sodomy than we have seen in the past.
(Speaking of gay propaganda, have you noticed how they've really muzzled the bisexuals and the polyamorists in their quest for normalization? Those people, too, would dispute that sexual attraction is not a kind of choice.)
Further, not all attractions should be indulged, such as a bachelor’s attraction to a married woman.
I will grant that some homosexual attractions have deep psychological causes, which some suggest to be related to sexual abuse or poor gender models in childhood and adolescence.
However, as the progressive magazine Mother Jones has noted (Gay by Choice? The Science of Sexual Identity, August 27, 2007) there are successful therapy programs for some people with same-sex attraction. Not all will work, obviously, and such people who cannot be helped ought to take up their cross and live chastely, just like poor and ugly ill-tempered bachelors who could never attract a woman.
You talk as if we can achieve a world where there is little suffering and no desire goes unaffirmed. I propose that suffering is inherent to life and that our desires are disordered and often must be checked by social pressure and reason.
“Ethics are something we can all agree on, morals have always created problems.”
This is a bizarre distinction. Aristotelian ethics and Kantian ethics are quite different.
“Christianity contains a lot of really good ethical precepts,”
Ultimately, these precepts are not separable from its sexual ethics.
“Jesus was the most prominent member of an intellectual movement that questioned the intrinsic value of humans based on class. That's where we get the notion of equality. It didn't exist before then.”
What? You’re losing me. I don’t know where you learned about Christianity, but it’s a lot different from the one I know.
I don’t know why you keep harping on the “translated poorly” thing about the Bible. Are you a linguist?
I can read the New Testament in Greek and I can’t recall ever finding divergences from the standard translations.
Also, your professed respect for Christian ethics is not consistent with your belittling of it. I advise more of the first and less of the second.
And why are you only skeptical of the sexual ethics?
“To cause undue pain and anguish to millions because of a few passages in a book seems very unethical to me.”
First, it’s not just a few passages in a book, but the whole Christian superstructure which produced or handed down those passages and the rest of Christian ethics.
Second, especially in recent decades, homosexuals have inflicted far more pain and anguish upon themselves than anyone else has. Perhaps the worst form of anguish is false happiness.
"In political argument, there is no need for Americans to justify their entire history to satisfy the latest criticisms of a gabby non-Christian minority."
Ahh, but that is the essence of reason, to understand the etiology of your own beliefs.
"As for producing a "functionally better society," I have little idea what that is and I do not wish to abuse Scripture to create it."
Give it some thought, and as for your fear of abusing scripture, I hardly see why you should fear running afoul of the intentions of the men who canonized the Bible. I don't see any evidence to convince me that they had God on their side when they decided which gospels and epistles etc would make the final edition.
Furthermore, while were on the subject of canonization, you say that sexual laws are integral to Christian morality, and yet the ancients by all credible accounts had a very different understanding of sexual morality, one based as much on status as it was on gender. But when the son of God himself came down here to set things straight, he befriended Mary Magdalene, told people that there is intrinsic worth in everyone, and rebuked those who would profit off the sacred among other things. If gender roles and sexual conduct are so important, I should expect that the son of God would have had a bit more to say on the subject. But we don't see the reiteration of impositions against sodomy until Romans, written after Jesus was dead and chosen from among many other candidates to be in the final version of the Bible wee see today. I really think that Jesus would have had more to say specifically about how we are to conduct ourselves sexually if it were so important. The books that follow the gospels are the opinions of men who claimed to be inspired, but we have no way of knowing that they were truly inspired by God in everything they said. We have only what the Council of Nicaea decided was scriptural. The Bible is written by men and not above criticism, to say otherwise is foolish.
"Where did you pick up your definition of traditional marriage?"
My apologies, replace the word 'entirely' with 'mostly'. I have a tendency to overuse superlatives when I am careless.
"Further, under the ethical definition of love, sodomy is not a loving act."
Only if not consensual. I can't imagine liking pork rinds, but that doesn't mean those who enjoy them are unethical.
"Ultimately, these precepts are not separable from its sexual ethics."
I know a lot of very faithful Christians who would heartily disagree with you on this one.
"I can read the New Testament in Greek and I can’t recall ever finding divergences from the standard translations."
But can you read the old testament in the original Hebrew? Jewish scholars are in agreement that there are some aspects of the original writing that make it difficult to translate into modern English accurately, such as where we get our definition of Sodomy, turns out that according to the Jews, who I trust to interpret their own book better than you, say the people of Sodom could just as easily have wanted to meet the angels as have sex with them. The key is in the context, and I'm afraid I'll have to go with the Jews on this one.
"You talk as if we can achieve a world where there is little suffering and no desire goes unaffirmed."
Your inference, not my intention.
"I propose that suffering is inherent to life and that our desires are disordered and often must be checked by social pressure and reason."
DUH! But that doesn't mean we shouldn't question what limits we can place on suffering and seek to divert social pressure towards more productive ends. Also, there is a lot about this world that defies reason, but you're religious, so you already know that.
"What? You’re losing me. I don’t know where you learned about Christianity, but it’s a lot different from the one I know."
Allow me to clarify: Before Jesus, it was perfectly acceptable to believe that some people were better than others, and that it was within the power of some to make righteous judgments upon others. Contemporary Roman and Jewish society had very little concepts of the intrinsic worth of every human being and couldn't countenance the fact that a Rabbi would befriend Mary Magdalene and minister unto the poor. The idea that God dwelt in the poorest among us was a radical shift. But Jesus wasn't the first to say this, in fact Hillel was the first to come up with the golden rule, for example. Jesus was the most prominent of the Hillelian philosophers, and people came to believe he was the son of God. I know that history is somewhat inconvenient for some apologists, but there it is.
"Second, especially in recent decades, homosexuals have inflicted far more pain and anguish upon themselves than anyone else has. Perhaps the worst form of anguish is false happiness."
You sir, have no idea what it feels like to live a closeted life.
Eh, I'm too tired to argue about Sodomy on Christmas Eve.
Thank you for contributing.
Merry Christmas!
Thanks for taking the time to argue.
Merry Christmas to you too!
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