Now for those people who know me stupidly well, you will be aware that I keep a foot in both camps when it comes to religion. Or more accurately, I perform a neat trick of levitation and keep both of my feet out of all the relevant camps. In other words, I am actively neutral, fighting on behalf of both atheism and relgion where I see fit.
What this means is, that since most of the posters on this website are atheists, is that they are under the impression that I am a deeply religious person who is very protective of his faith.
However, when I woke on the morning of the second of August, I was disgusted on both my religious and atheistic halves at what I heard said.
The thing which was said was said by one Iris Robinson, who made a clearly homophobic comment in a radio interview
"Homosexuality is not natural. My Christian beliefs tell me that it is an abomination and that is very clear."
"It is an offence to God, an offensive act and something that God abhors"
But this is not what got me going, believe it or not.
What really got my goat was the sentence that was aired in an interview with her, in which she stated, that Homosexuality was an abomination and that she refused to apologize for that point of view, because it was the word of God.
Now then, time for some superior theology, political critique and actual thought. All things she seems to be incapable of.
Firstly, she is a politician. Something that politicians seem to have forgotten is that MPs are not supposed to hold their own opinions, and are employed as REPRESENTATIVES of their populace. If she had said "the people of my constituency, have written to me, and it seems to be they believe... etc," then there would be no problem, but she is holding a prejudgemental point of view in a job where she is required to represent the views of others. Would she therefore, vote against a bill that favoured homosexual practice, even if a majority of her constituents felt differently? If not, then this opinion should never have been expressed.
Secondly, on the matter of words of God. Firstly, God is not reknowned for ever having written anything down himself. And the words of Leviticus which she quoted were almost certainly written down by legislators in ancient times, when a population only grew if people were making babies. Homosexuals don't do this, as a rule, and so they were declared an abomination. Also we must remember that this is a time at which a lot of disease was misunderstood, and some of it may have been attributed to homosexuality.
However, this is meagre point scoring, the real issue here is, that regardless of what the word says, and I realise there are numerous other meanings that can be construed from the literal sentence, and even more when you reconstruct it into hebrew; the word was almost certainly written by a man. All religious doctrine tells us that the only way to "hear" the "words" of "God", if those crude terms may be used, is to be silent to one's own feelings and opinions. A rule, or absolute law is absolutely contrary to that. Saying categorically "this is wrong" is not something that any great teacher of wisdom would say, and I particularly make note of J.C. Himself here, who's only absolute rules as far as I can tell were; "Love God" and "Love thy neighbour as thyself". The first of these is poorly translated but will do for now.
And lastly, the new Covenant OVERWROTE the old covanant, which was (or should have been, perhaps) kept only for historical context, rather than a source of law. Christians are called to follow Christs example.
Because I bet she's eaten shellfish, pork and other such foods before now.
Give me strength.
