So bimbos and drunks getting hitched after one night stands in Las Vegas is hunky dory but committed monogamous gay relationships aren’t.
Loukydad, why do you think the rest of us ought to be bound by your particular religious beliefs?
All the responses on this thread should simply read: “Who cares?” I mean, really, who cares? Some sheltered freshman doesn’t want to read a recommended book? Who cares? Including him. Why should he care? He seems to me like an intolerable narcissistic, proselytizing zealot, who just needs to have people listen to him, but who cares? If I had the same beliefs as him, and I’m being serious, I would’ve said “Who cares?” and would’ve gone and read something else. You don’t like gay marriage? Don’t get married to a member of the same sex. Simple. I think gay people should be allowed to get married, but I don’t think it was the SCOTUS job to decide that, but that’s another argument. Again, who cares? I’m all for everyone having their own views and opinions, but don’t confuse that with making me believe or abide by them as well. Should he have to read this book? No. (and he doesn’t). Should he write an article about it? No. Just grow up. Who cares?
JHS - sorry it just isn’t worth the energy.
I’d be more interested and motivated by a book discussion if alh or whoever decides to start one. PG can join in too when she gets tired of pounding me with the same questions over and over.
Please see my post on Biblical interpretation upthread.
In the Old Testament, polygyny (though never polyandry, as far as I can tell) is implicitly endorsed, at least for a particular social group. (New Testament, intriguingly, things are a bit different.) Concubinage, as well. Also—and this is explicitly condoned!—taking a captive woman from a defeated nation as a wife, no matter her level of willingness.
And levirate marriage! I don’t think you’re claiming we should go back to that tradition, are you? But that wasn’t even just an option, it was a command! Amazing how selective one can be when deciding what was part of “God’s blessing and plan”, eh?
dfbdfb - I imagine you aren’t really interested in my understanding of this at all, and you mainly just want to put me in my place. If that is all it is, let me know and I won’t waste my time.
There is no implicit endorsement anywhere of polygyny in the Bible. Is it part of the narrative? Yes, but it is never endorsed. The same with concubinage. I really don’t understand what you would base that on. The fact that it happened is not an endorsement at all. It is never presented as something positive, but rather it is more often associated with warnings from God and in some cases judgment.
I suppose you could say that because God blessed someone who had more than one wife or that had a concubine this was an implicit endorsement. If so this is a clumsy argument, because this was never the reason God blessed the person, and in many cases He choose to overlook many other things about the person as well.
As for any explicit allowance for taking a concubine from a defeated nation, I have no idea what you are even referring to. And of course I am not for going back to the tradition of levirate marriage. That was a commandment for Israel in their time, not for me and you. The reasons for God giving this tradition to Israel are well illustrated in the book of Ruth. Also, there is huge and important symbolism between the kinsman redeemer in levirate marriage and Christ. Should not be missed if you are really interested.
"That was a commandment for Israel in their time, not for me and you."
There’s the crux of the issue. If you wish to follow whatever commandments you see, feel free. (There goes the shrimp cocktail. Long curly sideburns. No posting on Saturdays either.)
But your interpretation of your holy book simply does not bind or apply to me or any other American. At all. Why do you think it does or should? Good grief, Orthodox Jews aren’t calling for the banning of shellfish.
“There is no implicit endorsement anywhere of polygyny in the Bible. Is it part of the narrative? Yes, but it is never endorsed. The same with concubinage”
Jacob’s kids seemed to do ok for themselves.
There is no implicit endorsement anywhere of [polygyny] [color=purple] homosexuality[/color=purple] in [the Bible] [color=purple]Fum Home[/color=purple]. Is it part of the narrative? Yes, but it is never endorsed…The fact that it happened is not an endorsement at all.
Isn’t that what we’ve been saying all along?
370 - "Just from poking and skimming, the book really isn't about sexuality per se. It's about secrets and how living a lie has so many consequences and prevents people from living their potential and being kind to those around them. If the father had been "allowed" to have been homosexual, he could have had loving relationships with others, instead of the dysfunctional relationship he had with the mother and with his children (including the author). Maybe in today's world he would have gotten married to a nice man and lived a nice, quiet, happy life instead of the lie he was forced to lead and the consequences of that on those around him."
I would agree this seems to be the major idea of the book. Somewhat unspoken and subtle you might say, but obviously implied. Do we agree with this? I have a lot of unanswered questions about this as an accepted premise.
“I suppose you could say that because God blessed someone who had more than one wife or that had a concubine this was an implicit endorsement. If so this is a clumsy argument, because this was never the reason God blessed the person”
If someone has no kids, and they are able to have kids because of the concubinage, it seems pretty clear that the concubinage led to those blessings.
Of course I agree. What’s not to agree with? Obviously being closeted caused him to act out in destructive ways and hurt other people. I really don’t even see how you can conclude otherwise. Obviously pretending to be heterosexual didn’t work as a strategy.
In the case of Jacob, as I recall Laban’s deceit was the reason he married two wives (Laban’s daughters). Yes he had children by both women, and by their maids (concubines) also. But no one in the narrative is following God’s commands when this played out.
It was not unusual for God to work through something man did that was not His will, or even evil, and He worked something good out of it. Look at the story of Joseph and his brothers for example, how their ill treatment of him ultimately worked out with the entire family being saved. I think this is the case with Jacob and his family also. God chose to bless the children of Jacob and to continue the covenant with them not because of what Jacob and Laban did, but in spite of it.
In the case of Abraham and Sarah, it is worth noting I think that God made a difference between Isaac and Ishmael, as well as Abraham’s other children. Only Isaac, the only son of the wife (Sarah) was the child of the covenant, even though Ishmael was born first. Separate blessings and gifts for the other children, but a difference was made.
If what God wanted was polygamy, Genesis 2:24 would look a lot different. 1 Corinthians 7 would also.
@LOUKYDAD wrote: “dfbdfb - I imagine you aren’t really interested in my understanding of this at all, and you mainly just want to put me in my place. If that is all it is, let me know and I won’t waste my time.”
No, that isn’t really it. Now, I certainly do feel that you’re being incredibly selective in your Biblical interpretation, and since you’re basing your objections to Fun Home/i on a Biblical basis, that’s a pretty big issue—and if trying to point out your interpretative biases is attempting “to put [you] in [your] place”, well, then, that. I don’t think that’s what it is, though—as a believer myself, it bothers me deeply when people claim that their interpretations of scripture are the one true way to read said scripture, without even acknowledging that other traditions have different ways of looking at things that, based on the plain text, are at least as valid.
- Though, as I've mentioned before, a believer who follows a tradition that some Christians would deny is Christianity, so if you want to write me off on that basis, then whatever.
I am not certain Pizzagirl’s summary, which LOUKYDAD quotes, is quite accurate as a description of Fun Home. Fun Home does not gloss over the difficulties and the dangers of coming out for people in the author’s generation and certainly for people in her father’s generation. From the perspective of today, sure, maybe we can say that there could have been a Hollywood kiss happy ending for Bechdel’s father had he been willing to be himself openly, but from within the story (and from within the times) the choice was between the horrible distortions of living a lie and the very scary realities of telling the truth.
Sure, implicitly Fun Home is arguing that the world should end the suffering and let homosexuals be homosexuals without shame or rejection. (I wouldn’t say that Fun Home doesn’t endorse homosexuality – of course it does.) Explicitly, though, I think its main argument (as far as I can remember, since I am still hundreds of miles from my copy) is that the hard consequences of truth are ultimately preferable to the long, slow corrosion of falsehood.
Re: The Bible. My bible, at least (I don’t have to deal with St. Paul), seems to have nothing whatsoever to say about lesbianism. It takes a lot of interpretive effort to get to a prohibition on lesbian sex from the condemnations of sex between men in Leviticus (which was linked to polytheistic cultic practices). And I have always wondered whether Leviticus 18 and 20 shouldn’t be read not as a blanket prohibition of sex between men but as a prohibition of a certain style of sex between men. The “abomination” may be having sex in which one man pretends to be (or is forced to be) a woman, as opposed to sex between men.as men. (Remembering, also, that when the Bible talks about a man lying with a woman, it is generally outside the context of marriage, and it is more often than not a relationship we would define as rape.) Treating a man like a woman is clearly something that would trip a lot of wires in the ancient world. Simple sex between men that does not involve failing to acknowledge the masculinity of either partner is a different issue.
@loukydad "Much2learn, can you explain how with such a filter, one could say or claim anything that is critical of homosexuality as a behavior or lifestyle? From a moral perspective or otherwise?
Unless I am misunderstanding you, the reality is that you really can’t.
Is there any scenario in your view where the story of Jakii Edwards can be told and given as much consideration as the story of Allison Bechdel?"
I don’t see Fun Home as a pro lesbian book, so I don’t see any equivalence between the two. I think gay people should be treated equally, but I am not gay and I don’t think that view makes me “pro gay.”
My issue with books like the Edwards book is that they take an example of bad people and then tie that badness to a particular characteristic they have, and then tagging all people with that characteristic as bad. I could see value in assigning this type of book as part of a course discussing the issue of this type of literature.
To me, there is a proper place for someone disposed to assert that one group is superior or inferior to another on a college. I think that should be done through research and evidence. Hypothetically, if it were actually true that homosexual parents are consistently worse parents than heterosexual parents, and that their failures as parents could be shown to be directly tied to that homosexuality, then I think a quality demonstrating that would be very valuable. The results of that study would give people something substantive to debate instead of a he said, she said of anecdotes.
I want to be clear that I do not believe that this is the case. Also, to my knowledge, not even the most conservative religious universities are working on research demonstrating this fact. However, I do believe that all credible views that are supported by substantive evidence should be fair game on a college campus, even if it makes some people uncomfortable.
If you mean this as only a moral and not a substantive issue, then I think that I give people that hold this view the same voice that is given to Nazis who want equal time when the holocaust is discussed and believe that Jews are inferior people, or KKK members who believe that black people are inferior people and want equal time if there is a book about a black person that is assigned.
I’ll just note that I have lots of scripturally based reasons to object to Atlas Shrugged. And no interpretive gymnastics are required, either.
@JHS - I wholeheartedly agree with what you’ve written. You probably know that the Jewish rabbinic “justification” for prohibiting lesbian behavior is about not “allowing your women to follow the ways of the Egyptians”. It was probably hard to find anything to hang that prohibition on, considering the massively phallocentric view of sex in biblical canon.
But whatever an ancient religious text has or doesn’t have to say on the subject, it shouldn’t be a source of decisions for:
(a) US law
(b) a reading assignment at a secular university
I haven’t seen a clear answer from anyone about why a fundamentalist Christian view of gay marriage would be any more relevant to US law than a fundamentalist Jewish view of bacon or a fundamentalist Muslim view of hair-covering.
One of the premises about the book I couldn’t fully buy into was the idea that the father’s repression was only single cause of so much that was dark and tragic about the book. There is lots of sexual repression out there. Priests that are celibate. People in unhappy, loveless marriages that remain in it faithfully for the children. Despite that, the instinct to love children, especially one’s own children, to tell them that you love them, to kiss them goodnight, to give rather than deny them the healthy affection that they need. How does it seem obvious to everyone but me why one thing is so completely linked to the other?
When The Vagina Monologues is on campus, should they give equal time to the opposing view?
Fixed that for you.