Antiquitopia

Jennifer Wright Knust has an op-ed piece on the belief blogs of cnn.com concerning the multiple, mixed, and contradictory messages the Bible has about sexuality. Check it out here .

From the NYTimes : November 12, 2009 Mormon Support of Gay Rights Statute Draws Praise By KIRK JOHNSON The Mormon church has been a target of vituperation by some gay-rights groups because of its active opposition to same-sex marriage. But on Wednesday, the church was being praised by gay rights activists in Salt Lake City, citadel of the Mormon world, for its open support of a local ordinance banning discrimination against gay men and lesbians in housing and employment. The ordinance, which passed unanimously Tuesday night, made Salt Lake the first city in Utah to offer such protections. While the measure probably had majority backing on the seven-member City Council anyway, the church’s support was seen by gay activists as a thunderclap that would resonate across the state and in the overwhelmingly Mormon legislature, where even subtle shifts in church positions on social issues can swing votes and sentiments. .... In its statement backing the ordinance, the Church of Jesus Christ of...

A new play, "Next Fall," takes on the intersection of faith and sexuality in an interesting way. Perhaps the usual discussion is a family with a homosexual child, and that child growing up and coming out in the context of a conflict of a more conservative faith and their own sexuality. This play, however, shifts the focus: what happens when there is a conflict of faith between two men in a relationship? It’s easy to mistake Geoffrey Naufft’s “Next Fall” for being slighter than it is. Much of this artful, thoughtful and very moving story of a gay couple agonizing over differences in their religious faiths proceeds with the stinging breeziness of a cosmopolitan comedy. You can imagine its concept being pitched to a television producer as a sort of “Will & Grace” with an ontological conscience: He’s a committed Christian, while he’s a committed atheist, and it’s driving their crazy friends even crazier! But the appealingly acted Naked Angels production that opened Wednesd...

Ok...so I thought that Rick Warren's analogy between gay marriage and brother-sister marriage was bizarre. I also thought his analogy between homosexuality and pedophilia ridiculous--unless he is stuck in Periclean Athens. But the award for the strangest homosexuality analogy goes to Pope Benedict XVI: VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Benedict said on Monday that saving humanity from homosexual or transsexual behavior was just as important as saving the rainforest from destruction. "(The Church) should also protect man from the destruction of himself. A sort of ecology of man is needed," the pontiff said in a holiday address to the Curia, the Vatican's central administration. "The tropical forests do deserve our protection. But man, as a creature, does not deserve any less." The Catholic Church teaches that while homosexuality is not sinful, homosexual acts are. It opposes gay marriage and, in October, a leading Vatican official called homosexuality "a d...

As my students just learned, the Bible does not support what are often touted as "family values" by conservatives...those same conservatives who look to the Bible to support their claims. What are the family values of the Bible? Largely polygamy, or as my academic advisor, Alan Segal, says, "One man, and as many women as he can pay for." What about Jesus? He changed a lot of things, right? Well, at least in the Bible we have, he was single. Moreover, he said he came to cause internal divisions between families: setting father against children, and vice versa, husband against wife, etc. In fact, Jesus was a single man in his early thirties (most likely) who called similar men in their prime to leave their wives and join him. Paul was also single. And, well, Paul suggested marriage only for those who could not contain their lust. Newsweek , in fact, picks up much of what I am saying here: Let's try for a minute to take the religious conservatives at thei...

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die So, with a guest appearance by Jesus, who says spread love and not hate, and Neil Patrick Harris noting the money to be made of gay marriage (and gay divorce), here is a musical plea to repeal Proposition 8.

N.T. Wrong posted this educational video from a documentary called For the Bible Tells Me So, which, as Wrong explains in the comments section of her/his blog, tracks four or five conservative evangelical families with their gay children. In this bit, "Christian" learns about some of the latest scientific research into homosexuality. I am sure many of you already know about it from her/him, but I thought I would "spread the wealth" of knowledge. The studies, as you might note, focus on male homosexuality. And so, as usual, they need to do more studies for women.