Republicans bend biblical verses to fit their narrative, ignore the loving scripture
More than 50 years ago, my wife and I adopted a baby girl born to an unwed mother at the Willows, a Kansas City maternity home. Two years later a young man — not the child’s father but a man fully aware of that birth — stood up in church and married the mother. They later had two children of their own and lived many years together until his death.
Contrast that narrative with one from the Bible reporting what happened when Joseph discovered that Mary was pregnant.
“Then Joseph…being a just man, and not willing to make her a public example, was minded to put her away privily. But…the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying…fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost.”
While the first young man strolled easily into his marriage, it required the angel’s “fear not” to carry Joseph into wedlock with Mary. So who was the more saintly: Joseph or the other bridegroom?
I grew up in a little Tulsa Baptist church, Sunday school attendance about 90. For years I was an on-fire-for-the-Lord Evangelical Christian living, as I still live a great deal, on what those Southern Baptists taught. But I find now that many church people pick and choose their own Bible.
It’s true that some scriptures call for death to men who go to bed with men. Those verses lie behind abuse inflicted on gay people, as in Republicans’ faked fury about imagined hordes of trans athletes competing against frail girls. Like maybe a half dozen in Kansas and Missouri?
I suggest instead that Republicans consider the whole Bible story, as in Mark 10:11, which states that “whosoever shall put away his wife and marry another committeth adultery against her.” Then compare it to Leviticus 20:20: “And the man that committeth adultery with another man’s wife...the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.”
If Republicans obey, fanatics will slaughter half the adult U.S. population, all of the remarried and their spouses. I am glad they ignore Deuteronomy 22:21, which dictates what happens to the bride whose parents cannot bring forth the cloth that would prove her pre-marital virginity.
“Then they shall bring out the damsel to the door of her father’s house, and the men of her city shall stone her with stones that she die...” The Bible condemns to death “he that blasphemeth the name of the Lord” (Leviticus 24: 10-16); “whosoever doeth work” on the Sabbath (Exodus 35: 2); and “everyone that curseth his father or his mother…” (Leviticus 20:9).
The Bible thus dooms so many people that Republicans can’t get traction for their attacks on the LGBTQ community. What can they do?
Certainly, it will not be helping desperately poor people with food stamps or granting health care through expanded Medicaid to 150,000 deprived Kansans, mostly women and children. But they can and do ban books they consider pornographic from classrooms and libraries.
Here’s a tip for them about a text they might find offensive: “Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins, which feed among the lilies…I will get me to the mountain of myrrh, and to the hill of frankincense…Thou hast ravished my heart, my sister, my spouse…Thy lips, O my spouse, drop as the honeycomb: honey and milk are under thy tongue…”
So, will Republicans exorcise this love poetry from the Bible’s Song of Solomon?
The latest Republican campaign is their “grooming” bit. When social workers, nurses and schoolteachers counsel gay or lesbian or trans children, Republicans call them “groomers,” to be attacked as sexually evil like Hollywood execs who corrupt young actresses. I suggest Republicans also research the sexual appetites of their own former (and perhaps future) president of the United States.
Oh, and that baby girl I mentioned earlier, the one my wife and I adopted? She is a social worker now, exposed to all that hatred.
I worry about her.
Contact the columnist at hammerc12@gmail.com.
This story was originally published May 24, 2023 at 5:00 AM.