But this wouldjesusdiscriminate.com site just irritates the hell out of me. They’ve got illegal yard signs posted all over the city with allusions to Biblical verses on them, like “David loved Jonathan more than women. II Samuel 1:26”. The clear message is “Jesus would have had no trouble with homosexuality because the Bible is full of stories that support it.”, and this is taken in support of this church’s view that gays shouldn’t be discriminated against by Christians.
Unfortunately, every one of these quotes is taken out of context so that the gay slant that isn’t there can be read into them anyway.
The David and Jonathan one is easy to refute. That single verse taken out of context doesn’t prove that David (who is said to be an umpty-great grandfather of Jesus through the Boaz lineage) was gay. It says that David was a warrior, and that he preferred being out in the field with warriors doing manly warrior things to sitting around the harem listening to the women gossip. It is impossible (given the outlook of the men who wrote and redacted the Hebrew Bible) that David or Jonathan were gay. Plus there is that little story about how David yearned to bone Bathsheeba so much that he had her husband Uriah murdered. If David didn’t love women, then there is something seriously wrong here.
But let’s look at some of these other assertions. Like, “Jesus affirmed a gay couple. Matthew 8:5-13”.
[5] And when Jesus was entered into Capernaum, there came unto him a centurion, beseeching him,
[6] And saying, Lord, my servant lieth at home sick of the palsy, grievously tormented.
[7] And Jesus saith unto him, I will come and heal him.
[8] The centurion answered and said, Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof: but speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed.
[9] For I am a man under authority, having soldiers under me: and I say to this man, Go, and he goeth; and to another, Come, and he cometh; and to my servant, Do this, and he doeth it.
[10] When Jesus heard it, he marvelled, and said to them that followed, Verily I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel.
[11] And I say unto you, That many shall come from the east and west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven.
[12] But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
[13] And Jesus said unto the centurion, Go thy way; and as thou hast believed, so be it done unto thee. And his servant was healed in the selfsame hour.
Where is the gayness here? I don’t see it. There is absolutely no suggestion of gay behavior between the centurion and his servant. None. How does it suggest that a man has homosexual feelings toward another man simply because he desires him to recover from an illness?
The answer is, it doesn’t. You have to read it in by coming from a particular direction with a particular end in mind, but your isogesis is just as subject to ridicule as anyone else’s. Most folks who read and study the Bible don’t stand for this sort of thing.
How about, “Ruth loved Naomi as Adam loved Eve. Genesis 2:24, Ruth 1:14”. This misinterpretation derives from the fact that in English the verb “to cleave” has two diametrically opposite meanings. From Dictionary.Com we find that “cleave1” means
-verb (used without object), cleaved or (Archaic) clave; cleaved; cleav·ing.
1. to adhere closely; stick; cling (usually fol. by to).
2. to remain faithful (usually fol. by to): to cleave to one’s principles in spite of persecution.
whereas “cleave2” means
-verb (used with object)
1. to split or divide by or as if by a cutting blow, esp. along a natural line of division, as the grain of wood.
2. to make by or as if by cutting: to cleave a path through the wilderness.
3. to penetrate or pass through (air, water, etc.): The bow of the boat cleaved the water cleanly.
4. to cut off; sever: to cleave a branch from a tree.
-verb (used without object)
5. to part or split, esp. along a natural line of division.
6. to penetrate or advance by or as if by cutting (usually fol. by through).
It’s fairly clear (in a simplistic and over-sexualized reading) that the King James translators must have meant cleave2 for Adam and Eve, whereas they meant cleave1 in the case of Ruth and Naomi. (I have another translation that says that Ruth “held fast” to Naomi — because from the context, her sister was getting ready to go back to Judah and Ruth simply did not wish to leave Moab and the family that she had become a part of.) And it’s also clear that Ruth was later pretty much impressed by big bad teddybear Boaz…besides the fact that there’s nothing in the story suggesting that Ruth and Naomi were, er, getting it on.
The other problem is that the Hebrew verb root דבק actually doesn’t have a sexual connotation. It simply means to “cling, cleave [in the cleave1 sense], keep close”. (See Brown, Driver and Briggs’ Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, p. 179.) So in both cases cleave1 is probably correct, and the correct translation of the verse should probably be more like “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall [instead] hold fast to his wife; and they shall be one flesh.”
But we don’t need a degree in English etymology or Hebrew verbs to puzzle this out. It’s obvious in both the Hebrew original and the English translation of Genesis 2:24 that man does not just cleave to his wife, but they become one flesh. Unfortunately for those who would think that using the same word “cleave” in Ruth means that the relationship between Ruth and Naomi was more than just daughter-in-law and mother-in-law, the passage in Ruth says nothing about Ruth and Naomi becoming one flesh. And if you look at the context, the whole thesis falls apart anyway.
I don’t have time right now to tear apart the rest of the out-of-context assertions these morons are making, but I may come back to it later.
EDIT: After re-reading this I found some typos and conceptual errors that I’ve fixed. My problem is that I think faster than I type.