Bigotry is Bigotry is Bigotry

 

1 Timothy 6: 1-2: "Christians who are slaves should give their masters full respect so that the name of God and his teaching will not be shamed. If your master is a Christian that is no excuse for being disrespectful. You should work all the harder because you are helping another believer by your efforts. Teach these truths, Timothy, and encourage everyone to obey them."

 

Ephesians 6: 5: "Slaves, obey your earthly masters with deep respect and fear. Serve them sincerely as you would serve Christ."

 

          Despite the denial of some theo moderates, the Bible is homophobic. But the text dedicated to bashing homosexuality is, although harsh, not nearly as extensive as that dedicated to condoning slavery; an entire chapter, Philemon, is about Paul returning a Christian slave to his rightful master (Huck Finn had more decency than that -- Mark Twain was a dedicated anti-Christian, and his classic novel is an expose of the moral depravity of the dark side of the religion). That's why Southern Christian whites could not believe it when other Christians blathered on about how Jesus was antislavery when at no point does Christ come anywhere near close to denouncing the institution. Could those antislavery folks read? The Bible is seriously immoral because it was written by slave keeping, homophobic, misogynist, anti-democracy tribal patriarchs. To turn to the tract to determine modern ethics is moral inanity.

          For black Christians to cite the Bible as justifying their homophobia is about as theologically logical and as ethically vile as white Christians citing the same volume's support of slavery to warrant their discrimination against blacks . Obviously black Christians long ago choose to arbitrarily wave away the extensive support for discriminatory slavery in their sacred book (the only and viable alternative being to reject Judeo-Christianity). That many do that while embracing the lesser assault on gays is sheer cynicism.

          Why are otherwise good folks who should know better making such a big mistake? That ultimate answer is easy enough. The problem with black Christians who oppose gays enjoying equal rights is that they are human beings like the rest of us. And if there is a thing that many humans like doing it is picking on other people. Ergo many blacks who hated being picked upon by whites are picking on gays. When all is said and done it pretty much comes down to that. So blacks can easily dismiss all the Biblical support for slavery because that has been used to pick on them. Too many blacks can then without obvious signs of recognizing their inconsistency claim to be unable to reject the Biblical bashing of homosexuals because that's picking on someone else.

          If in November gay marriage is voted down in Maryland, then it will be the result of a perverted alliance between the homophobic wing of moderate Black Christians with the largely white gay bashing Evangelical right wing that used to be for keeping blacks in their place -- including not married to whites.

          So blacks who believe that gays should not be able to marry one another are objectively bigoted. A bigotry that stems from religion. If they don't like being charged with bigotry, that is solvable -- stop trying to keep gays in their place. And nothing bad will happen. Western civilization will not, despite what Newt Gingrich and company claim, come to an end. That doing the right thing means denying the truth of the Bible should not be a problem since every single black (I don't know of any who approve of slavery) does that all the time.

          When white Richard and black Mildred Loving were petitioning the Supreme Court for the right of interracial marriage that was still denied in a number of states (where referendums would have likely continued the ban) Richard told his attorney to tell the court that he "just loved his wife." It is the same appeal that is helping break down the churlish resistance to same sex marriage. So just what is the real reason a bunch of you Christians want to keep marriage heterocentric?

          The final point is that there is a tendency among centrists and liberals to blame all the ills that issue from religion upon the fundamentalists. This is largely true, but by no means not entirely. Many black moderates are standing in the way of gay rights. As I have shown elsewhere, moderate and liberal religion is as strongly associated with inferior socioeconomic conditions as is the fundamentalist variety (probably because superior socioeconomic conditions drives down the popularity of religion across the right-left spectrum, http://www.infidels.org/kiosk/article847.html).

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