Hee!  I thoroughly enjoyed watching Colbert pick Perkins apart.  One wishes the so-called MSM (also known as the Slave Media) would occasionally raise the same arguments.  It would make for better television all around.

The governments in the US (state and local) only began licensing marriage in order to prevent interracial marriage.  Someone ought to point that out to these a$$clowns.  The only historical requirement for a marriage to be legal is witnesses and/or public notice.

You know, I have also read the Constitution backwards and forwards, and I’m pretty sure it doesn’t mention marriage at all, gay, straight, or otherwise.

And if marriage is the “building block of society,” well, then I’m the Queen of Merry Olde England. If there is even such a thing as the “building block of society” in the first place, it’s not marriage, it’s cash money.

MikeEss,

In their defense, the only thing that makes moderate to liberal christians tolerable is their recognition that some tings in the bible are simply untenable.  It’s the fundamentalists (like this Perkins jerk) who do verbal gymnastics to justify their cherry-picking that are the dangerous ones.  The difference between the two, essentially, is that the fundamentalist sees the bible as their final authority whereas more moderate and liberal christians rely on the bible not as THE source, but A source along with tradition, and (believe it or not) reason.  How do I know this?  I’m a former fundy preacher, presently atheist by way of reason and rationality.

I was hoping that “Tony Perkins” would have been the guy who played Norman Bates in Psycho, but he passed away fifteen years ago.

In their defense, the only thing that makes moderate to liberal christians tolerable is their recognition that some tings in the bible are simply untenable.  It’s the fundamentalists (like this Perkins jerk) who do verbal gymnastics to justify their cherry-picking that are the dangerous ones.

Well, to be perfectly honest the difference is more that the fundies pretend they’re taking the Bible “literally”, when really they’re not, whereas mainstream Christians quite openly do not take it literally and do not pretend to.  That doesn’t so much happen because “some things are untenable”, but because they are sane and rational people who’ve possibly actually opened up the Bible and looked around in it and realized that you just cannot take it literally, it’s just not fracking possible.  It’s just not a set of instructions on the back of a box of cake mix, and it’s never going to be.  Nobody has EVER thought you were supposed to take the Bible literally, until the fundies came along.

There’s also the whole part where Christians decided back in, like the Council of Nicaea or something, that they didn’t have to and weren’t going to follow ANY part of the law of the Old Testament.  NONE OF IT is binding.  Period. (Even the Ten Commandments, actually.)  And then the fundies came along and decided to pick and choose a few of said laws to obey above all else in their moral universe, simply because it allowed them to hate others a little more efficiently.

To be honest, the problem is that evangelicals and fundamentalists are heretics, NOT that some Christians are more “liberal” than others about interpreting the bible.

He more than confirmed them, but expanded the meanings of the laws, making them more restrictive.

Yes, which means that his specific expansions are what Christians are enjoined to obey.

The decalogue as it appears in Exodus—not binding on Christians.

The sermon on the mount—totally binding on Christians.

Part of the reason I left Christianity is that a majority of Christians I know don’t actually know this fact, or even if they do they persist in ignoring 90% of everything Jesus ever said in favor of the Old Testament (with occasional backup by Paul).

In the end, only four Jewish laws were held as requirements for Gentiles to convert: avoiding meat from animals sacrificed to idols, meat from animals killed by strangulation, meat with blood remaining in it, and unlawful sexual unions.

So I assume you slaughter and butcher your own meat rather than buying it in the supermarket?  Because otherwise you’re in violation of that whole “meat with blood remaining in it” and not a real Christian.

In fact, by that argument, Amanda is a more observant Christian than you since she’s a vegetarian and doesn’t eat meat at all.

You don’t have to slaughter and butcher your own meat to be sure there’s no blood left in it.  The directions for kashering are right there on the package of Morton’s Kosher Salt.

I agree with Amanda’s comment above for the most part, except that I want to point out that Paul actually never calls for people to live in celibacy in marriage - in fact, he pretty much straight out says that both husbands and wives have an undeniable right to each other’s bodies (Which is scary enough, actually, as it provides fuel for people like Phyllis Schlafly to declare that there’s no such thing as marital rape).  Basically, Paul wanted everyone to stay unmarried and celibate, but knew that too many people wanted to get their jollies on for that to be even remotely feasible.

avoiding meat from animals sacrificed to idols

Somewhat tangential, but how can (some) Christians agree with this, and also believe in transusbtantiation?

Well if that’s true, Dana, then clearly you must only eat halal or kosher meat.

How do The Daily Show and Colbert find their endless parade of victims? Are there that many people without basic cable?

And Dana, I take it your wife never enters church with her head uncovered, because according to St. Paul, who wrote Romans and Corinthians, that would “dishonor her head.”

Dana, I don’t get you.  You tell me to my virtual face that you’re not hateful and that your opposition to same-sex marriage is solely an economic-political standpoint, and yet you’re scrabbling to find reasons to say “GAWD HATES TEH QUEERZ!”

So which is it, Dana: Bigot or asshole?

How do The Daily Show and Colbert find their endless parade of victims? Are there that many people without basic cable?

Well, people like Perkins won’t subscribe to things like cable, since, y’know, paying money to large, Republican-supporting corporations is really supporting the EBIL GAYHOMOQUEERHOLLEEWOODLIBRULS.

Amanda, there are several prohibitions on homosexual activity in the New Testament as well: ...

Maybe Dana could tell us why a secular government would consider any religious rule—including Christian-Bible rules forbidding women from wearing gold jewelry or braiding their hair; requiring slaves to obey their masters; demanding that married women be subservient to their husbands, etc. (all New Testament, by the way—as anything more than an irrelevant oddity?

You don’t have to slaughter and butcher your own meat to be sure there’s no blood left in it.  The directions for kashering are right there on the package of Morton’s Kosher Salt.

I have a sneaky feeling that Dana is not actually doing that, but I’d love to see him claim to do so with a straight face.

How do The Daily Show and Colbert find their endless parade of victims? Are there that many people without basic cable?

He and Jon Stewart give the crazies and the non-crazies equal treatment. What they don’t do is scream at and talk over their guests, which is why I watch their shows and read the rest of my news.

Perkins is scarier than he appears. Dave at Orcinius has a huge story today on him relating to the Christian terrorists known as the Phineas Priesthood.

http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/

My problem with legal (meaning: state accepted and approved) same-sex marriage isn’t an economic-political one, but is based solely on wishing to protech religious institutions from criminal and civil penalties if they refuse to perform same-sex marriages.  As far as the economic aspects are concerned, I see no significant differences between same-sex marriages, civil unions or no recoignition of same-sex relationships at all, at least not in the sense of an impact on society; clearly, there’d be some impact in individual cases.

Dana, what a load of hogwash. No church is ever going to be forced by law to perform marriage ceremonies for gays or lesbians. They are free to be as bigoted and hateful as they want to be. What irks you and your ilk is that you are losing force of law to maintain your hate-filled status quo. Churches bleated the same exact drivel in regard to interracial marriages not so very long ago.

I, for one, was ecstatic when I heard the great news on NPR just hours after the ruling. My husband was just as elated. I haven’t been this proud of being a Californian since the voters rejected the parental notification bill for a second time (and by a greater margin than the first time). The joy I take in my own marriage has been marred by the fact that so many gay and lesbian friends and acquaintances of mine are denied the legal protections of marriage, even though they have been in committed, loving relationships for decades and are married in all but name.

You’ve misunderstood me, Damian.  I pointed out the scriptural references in the New Testament, which some here apparently didn’t know existed, which state that homosexual activity is sinful.

Uh, no.  If you actually read the ENTIRE PASSAGE and not just the few lines that you cherry-picked, it says that rejecting God is sinful, and rejecting God leads to a long list of bad things that includes “men lying with men” blah blah blah.  It’s basically associating homosexuality with paganism which, given that they were living in the pagan Roman Empire, was not really a huge leap.  As far as Paul’s concerned, homosexuality is the symptom, not the problem.

The Unbound Bible is a very handy site to check these things.  Always start about 10 verses before and end 10 verses after the one you’re directed to and suddenly it’s not quite so clear as the person quoting the verses told you it is.

Dana:

I don’t at all like the idea that such is being imposed on a clearly reluctant society by judicial fiat,

And that sentiment is exactly why you shouldn’t have slept through your eighth-grade civics class.

The whole point of the judiciary in this country is to ensure that our laws are consistent with the relevant state or federal constitution, regardless of what society thinks. The will of the voters is not sacrosanct, and I have no idea where you and your ilk got the idea that it is or ought to be.

Dana has convinced me—the Bible forbids gay marriage.  The only solution is for my boyfriend and me to enter into a covenant, and for me to move in with his dad. (I Samuel 18:1-4):

1And it came to pass, when he had made an end of speaking unto Saul, that the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.

4And Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that was upon him, and gave it to David, and his garments, even to his sword, and to his bow, and to his girdle.

Yeah, there really are, like TWO verses in the whole Bible that are pretty unequivocal, and both of them are nestled right in with the pork, polyblends, and haircut sorts of rules.

The other “big bash” verses are laughably inapplicable when you actually read them. Even if you take them seriously, they aren’t about what everyone thinks they are. Sodom is about forbidding forcible gang rape of visiting angels, not about the nice gay couple next door inviting them to brunch. Most of Paul is recent mistranslations of concepts like child prostitution and sexual idolatry. The only mention of lesbianism in the Bible makes it clear that it was a punishment inflicted on a specific group of people for specific sins, not a general case, unless you want to extend all Biblical cases where things like blindness, muteness, and being turned into salt mean that ALL blind, mute, or salty people are inherently sinners.

I always like to point out the the Adam and Eve crowd that only three of their kids were discussed at all (all male), and one of them was a murderer. Kinda by definition, all of Adam and Eve’s grandkids had to be the product of some form of incest, but that aside, who’s to say that 10 percent of them weren’t gay?

Cain married into some other god’s people though, Lymis, “in the land of Nod, east of Eden”. (What do Christians say about this, anyhow? Looks like a sloppy rewrite to me…)