The eminently sensible Sexual Orientation Regulations will be debated in the House of Lords today. I strongly suspect that the bill will be passed but the homophobes and bigots are apparently organising a last-minute protest.
Let’s get one thing perfectly clear here. Any christian who says that they object to this law on religious grounds is either lying or badly misinformed. The christian church doesn’t take its morals from the bible. Rather, it decides which things it wants to get moral about and then finds biblical passages to back up its bigotry. It’s true that there are passages in the bible that are pretty clear on what they thing about homosexuality. Here’s one, Leviticus 18:22:
Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.
Leviticus 20:13 repeats and expands upon the point:
If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death. Their blood shall be upon them.
Both of those are pretty clear. But these passages are both in Leviticus. The previous chapter is all about how to carry out your sacrifice correctly and the following one has all manner of picky little rules that no-one follows any more.
There are plenty of other places in the bible (particularly in the old testament and even more particularly in Leviticus and Deuteronomy) where rules are laid down that most people (including most christians) don’t follow today. All that stuff about keeping slaves or not working on the sabbath or wearing a beard (if you’re a man). Plenty of implicit sexism and racism. All rules that modern christians are quite happy to ignore.
But when there’s something that they want the bible’s support on – something that they’ve decided they don’t like – then suddenly Leviticus becomes all-important and they absolutely have to force its rules onto society.
So, by all means protest against the SORs if you want. But be honest about why you’re doing it. You’re doing it because you’re a homophobe and a bigot. Or because you’re a member of a church that is run by homophobes and bigots. There is no religious basis for your bigotry. Unless, of course, you’re following all of the rules in Leviticus.
p.s. Yes, I know that Paul wrote stuff about homosexuality too. But what did Paul know? Surely he was just writing down what he thought the members of the early church wanted to hear?