Bible

When a young man invoked the Bible after murdering an older man for making sexual advances, a prominent gay activist wrote in agreement that the Bible does say to kill gays—implying that gays would be better off without religion.

While the current assault on unions seems driven mostly by the billionaire Koch brothers and corporate-funded groups, religious right leaders and activists have spent decades creating fertile soil for anti-union campaigns through the promotion of biblical capitalism.

Reading the story Sodom as being about homosexuality is like reading the story of an axe-murderer and saying it’s about an axe.

Fox News says that Pres. Obama “misquoted” the Bible because he used the New International Version instead of the King James… Wait, what?

The week in religion.

The Qur’an-burning Terry Jones is back to put the text on trial. Maybe he’s just a comedian in disguise.

The decision to deploy the image of innocent childhood at the end of Obama’s Tuscon speech seemed strange then, and still seems strange now.

Recently, on The Huffington Post, Rev. Chellew-Hodge suggested that gays and lesbians should never argue Scripture—in particular, the half dozen “clobber verses” that some people interpret against gays. Why? Because nobody wins, everyone’s opinion hardens, and we talk past each other, because gays and lesbians are usually not biblical literalists, while our opponents usually are. Chellew-Hodge’s suggestion sounds wise, but I want to respectfully disagree with it.

The Tea Party-inspired constitutional recitation of January 6 immediately ran into the problems any fundamentalism has with sacred scripture: what do you do with the parts that speak to the original intent of an entirely different era—stoning adulterers, casting down fire on one’s enemies, selling all one’s possessions and giving to the poor, requiring the return of runaway slaves, and counting slaves as three-fifths of a person for the purposes of taxation and representation?

The truth is that the administration simply caved before the still potent specter of so-called “Death Panels”—a specter created last year by the likes of Sarah Palin, John Boehner, and other disingenuous opponents of health care reform. Let’s just say that in this new year, Team Obama is worried to death (pardon the expression) about defending its signature health care law from further assaults from the newly-emboldened Republicans.