역시 San Francisco Chronicle이 기사이다.
부쉬와 기독교. 그리고 미국.. 미국인들..복잡 복잡..
Religion in the Heartland is more complex than those of us in the blue states sometimes think
"Dear President Bush ..." begins a satirical screed that was popular on the e-mail circuit after the election, "Thank you so much for doing so much to educate people regarding God's Law. ... When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination."
The letter writer then wryly proceeds to explore other implications of applying the biblical laws of Leviticus to modern life:
"Leviticus 25:44 states that I may possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can't I own Canadians?"
"I know from Leviticus 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?"
"My uncle has a farm. He violates Leviticus 19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife, by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend.) He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them, as suggested by Leviticus 24: 10-16? Couldn't we just burn them to death at a private family affair, like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws as per Leviticus 20:14?"
The litany of deadpan queries concludes with faux gratitude to Bush, who boosted his electoral margin by advocating an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to ban gay marriage: "Thank you again for reminding us that God's word is eternal and unchanging."
The e-mail is facetious, but it also reflects what serious Christians on both sides of the cultural divide are doing these days: returning to Scripture to help them reconcile their traditional view of sin with the shifting sands of modern society.
The words of the Bible lie at the heart of the United States' broad rejection of equal rights for gay and lesbian citizens. But there is vociferous disagreement about the meaning of those words. Increasingly, churches are consulting scholars, parsing Hebrew and Greek terminology, sponsoring in-depth discussion forums and commissioning research to examine exactly what the Bible says, and what passages written thousands of years ago when concubines were the norm, mean for 2005.
Here in the Bay Area -- or Sodom and Gomorrah, as our region has been nicknamed by the region we have nicknamed the Bible Belt -- many residents have trouble grasping the roots of the religious objections others have to homosexuality.
It's easy for people here, most of whom either know gays and lesbians or are gay or lesbian themselves, to dismiss anyone holding such objections as hate-filled and homophobic. But those labels seem unjustly harsh to many people who rely on what they believe is God's guidebook about a host of contemporary mores.
Nor can the setback of same-sex marriage be ascribed merely to hateful homophobes -- there aren't enough of them, thank God. Voters in November rejected same-sex marriage in 11 states, just as voters in several other states including California had already done.
Although several religions cast a wary eye on homosexuality, in the United States it is a uniquely divisive political issue among Christians. Conservative and fundamentalist preachers -- including some whose sermons are broadcast every Sunday morning in the Bay Area -- told their listeners that the institution of heterosexual marriage is under siege and needs their protection. On Election Day, the religious right heeded that clarion call in record numbers.
What difference does this make to Americans of other faiths, or no faith at all? Simply that they may understand the current political impasse better by recognizing what fosters the resistance raised by many Christians. This isn't just theology anymore -- it's politics, and pivotal politics at that.
The tale of Sodom and Gomorrah is a good place to begin, because it is the origin of the very word once used to criminalize sex among gay men -- sodomy. What exactly constituted the wickedness that triggered the destruction of the twin cities of Sodom and Gomorrah?
The story related in Genesis is that a man living in Sodom named Lot took in two angels disguised as men to be his houseguests. In the middle of the night, a mob of local men demanded that Lot surrender his guests so they could have sex with them. Lot refused and, amazingly, offered up his two virgin daughters to the mob instead.
Genesis says Sodom and nearby Gomorrah were consequently demolished by "sulfur and fire from the Lord."
In context, the tale doesn't read as an indictment of consensual gay sex -- it's a sickening denouncement of gang rape. The prophet Ezekiel later quotes God as enumerating Sodom's fatal flaws, and one could argue that these Sodomites sound about as similar to certain televangelists as to your basic resident of the Castro: They were overly proud, haughty, gluttonous and indifferent to the poor and needy.
Elsewhere, the Old Testament is clearer. Leviticus 20:13 states, "If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination and shall be put to death."
Still, nobody today -- not even the most fundamental of fundamentalists -- follows in a literal way every one of the hundreds of laws of Exodus and Leviticus, which mix universal ethics with cultural taboos. If they did, our society would still be stoning adulterers, not to mention executing anyone who curses their parents or works on the Sabbath.
But for every discarded law -- say, for example, the one prohibiting men from getting their hair trimmed around their temples -- there are others that form the foundation of modern jurisprudence, including bans on incest, theft and murder.
For Christians, the New Testament teachings of Jesus and his disciples take precedence over some of the Old Testament prescriptions and cancel them out -- that's why Christians don't follow the Jewish diet of "keeping kosher. "
On relations of gays and lesbians, however, Jesus Christ is silent.
That the early Christian church continued to perpetuate the dim view of homosexuality is conveyed via the epistles of Paul, best known as the apostle who spread Christianity from its Jewish origins to Gentiles throughout the Roman Empire.
Writing to the fledgling church in Rome, Paul offered gay and lesbian sex among a list of 23 activities committed by Gentiles that debased them and incurred God's wrath. He described it as exchanging the "natural" for the "unnatural." Another letter from Paul to the church in Corinth lists "sodomites" along with "fornicators, idolaters, adulterers and male prostitutes" as "wrongdoers who will not inherit the kingdom of God."
Not that Paul was a strong proponent of heterosexual marriage -- to the contrary, he advocated celibacy as spiritually superior. But he allowed that if people lacked the self-control to abstain from sex, they at least should confine it to marriage.
Many leaders of the early Christian church subscribed to the theory articulated by Augustine, that sexual desire was evil even in marriage, but forgivable if couples engaged in intercourse for the purpose of conceiving children.
It is true the Bible says nothing overtly positive about homosexuality, although some scholars have tried reading between the lines -- discerning, for example, a subliminal gay relationship between the Old Testament's King David and his beloved friend Jonathan.
Only in recent decades have Christians begun to reconsider the enduring view that gay sex is immoral. A small minority of churches has begun to bless gay unions, but with the increasing social acceptance of civil rights for gays and lesbians, other churches have more forcefully condemned such marriages.
The nation's Roman Catholic bishops are kicking off a crusade to defend traditional marriage, expressing the hope that the focus on "moral values" in the presidential election's exit polls will "lead to real action to ... defend marriage." Southern Baptists and members of the Assemblies of God are fighting to defeat what they call the "homosexual agenda."
The debate threatens to rip apart many mainline congregations of Episcopalians, Lutherans, Methodists and Presbyterians, leading those denominations to initiate an intensive appraisal of their doctrine.
At issue is a question that probes the core of Christianity: How literally should Scripture be interpreted?
Fundamentalists maintain that every scintilla of Scripture reveals divine instruction. They are propelled by this adherence to a strict, literal interpretation of the Bible -- remember that they view straight people who have sex outside of marriage with a similar moral reprobation.
For these believers, the church loses its bearings when individual Christians pick and choose which passages to follow and which to jettison -- or as philosopher/rocker Bob Seger would say, "what to leave in, what to leave out."
But over time, nearly all Christian churches have opted to disregard certain Old and New Testament prohibitions -- against women speaking or appearing without their heads covered in church, for example -- as applicable to the year A.D. 60 but outdated two millennia later.
For centuries, Christians who practiced slavery cited biblical support, noting that Paul explicitly urged slaves to "obey your masters," although only the KKK fringe of the Christian right would today argue for reinstituting the slave trade.
Theologically liberal Christians argue that specific biblical taboos are open to reinterpretation, and superseded by more important universal commandments, such as Jesus' admonishment to love your neighbor as yourself.
They contend that God intended believers to incorporate scientific enlightenment into their reading of often allegorical Scripture -- say, for instance, when the Bible suggests the sun moves around the Earth but astronomy demonstrates otherwise. Or when the Bible suggests gay sex is a sinful choice while modern science says it's the result of biological orientation.
The "moral values" debate cuts to the quick. That's because one side feels its faith is under attack while the other feels its sexuality is under assault.
Christians troubled by homosexuality object to being labeled homophobic bigots and "punished" for their beliefs. In Sweden, a Pentecostal pastor recently was sentenced to a month in jail for violating that country's hate- speech law after he delivered a sermon against homosexuality.
Gays and lesbians object to the use of religious tenets -- sometimes awash in vitriol -- to deny them their pursuit of happiness. The Web site www.godhatesfags.com claims that San Francisco coach Diane Whipple -- a lesbian who was the victim of a vicious dog mauling -- "has been in hell for 1,398 days and counting. Deal with it! All else is trivial and unimportant. All the fag caterwauling, candlelight vigils, court orders, etc., can't buy these perverts one drop of water to cool their tongues."
Fortunately, most people on both sides of the gay rights debate recognize the importance of finding a more humane, tolerant way to contemplate their differences and seek understanding.
In a perfect world, perhaps, political liberals would honor the right of conservative Christians to morally oppose certain types of sexual activity, much as they respect the right of vegans to morally oppose eating animal products. And conservative Christians would recognize the difference between holding personal moral beliefs and requiring their government to legally impose them on everyone.
For now, however, a perfect world seems rather far away.