Gay-hatin' Gospel (pt. 4)

According to research by the Barna Group:

The most common perception is that present-day Christianity is "anti-homosexual." Overall, 91 percent of young non-Christians and 80 percent of young churchgoers say this phrase describes Christianity. As the research probed this perception, non-Christians and Christians explained that beyond their recognition that Christians oppose homosexuality, they believe that Christians show excessive contempt and unloving attitudes towards gays and lesbians. One of the most frequent criticisms of young Christians was that they believe the church has made homosexuality a "bigger sin" than anything else.

How did such a strange thing come to pass?

Theory No. 4: The Exegetical Panic Defense

In American popular culture, the most accurate and affectionate portrayal of an evangelical Christian is Ned Flanders. Seriously. He's overly earnest and myopically naive, but overall he is, like the majority of our evangelical Christian neighbors and relatives, a Very Nice Person. Barna's survey results above thus present us with an odd conundrum: What is it about homosexuals in particular that turns these otherwise Very Nice People into viciously negative people characterized by their "excessive contempt"?

Part of the answer, I think, has little to do with homosexuals or homosexuality per se. It has to do, rather, with epistemology -- with the need for certainty and the panicked hostility that surfaces when that certainty is threatened.

"We see through a glass, darkly," St. Paul said, warning against the temptation to chase the will-o'-the-wisp of certainty. But American evangelicalism is largely based on the idea that certainty is not only possible, but necessary. Mandatory, even. This certainty can be achieved thanks to the one-legged stool of the Evangelical Unilateral.

That's a made-up term, but it describes something real. It's a play on the "Wesleyan Quadrilateral" -- an approach to theological thinking that relies on the four foundations of scripture, tradition/community, reason and experience.

The evangelical approach to theological thinking is exactly like this Wesleyan method, except it doesn't include tradition or community. Or reason. Or experience. All of those things are viewed, instead, as potentially corrosive threats to the pure certainty offered by scripture alone -- by the unambiguous and self-evident, prima facie "literal" meaning of scripture. Such an approach requires not only that the text itself be pure,* accessible, infallible, inerrant and impervious to misinterpretation but also that the reader of the text be pure, insightful, infallible, inerrant and incapable of misinterpretation. It requires that the reader be some kind of Platonic ideal, a blank slate uninfluenced by culture, language, intellect or life experience. That is, of course, impossible. The point here, however, is not to evaluate or criticize this evangelical epistemology, or to point out all the ways in which it does not and cannot work, but rather to acknowledge descriptively that this is how American evangelical Christians attempt to view the world.

When faced with apparent contradictions amongst scripture, tradition, reason and experience, a Christian applying something like the Wesleyan Quadrilateral will attempt to reconcile them. A Christian applying the Evangelical Unilateral will, instead, determine that they don't need to be reconciled and that any apparent contradictions between scripture and reason, or between scripture and tradition (i.e., how others have interpreted that same text), or even between scripture and their own life experience must be settled by embracing the apparent meaning of the former and rejecting the apparent meaning of the latter.

A rather vivid example of this is provided by our old friend Marshall Hall, proprietor of the Web site FixedEarth.com. Hall believes the Bible tells us that the earth is "fixed" -- that it does not rotate or revolve, but sits unmoving at the center of the universe. Reason and experience explicitly contradict this belief, and tradition suggests that Hall is misinterpreting the passages he cites as proof of his fixed-earth theory, but he doesn't care about any of those things. Sola scriptura! The Bible says it, he believes it, that settles it.**

Young Earth Creationism is another infamous example of this Unilateralist epistemology at work. The starting point for adherents of this belief is that the Bible teaches that the world is only 6,000 or so years old. If science claims otherwise, then science must be rejected.

That's actually relatively easy to manage if you're not yourself a scientist. Those of us who are non-scientists rely on the conclusions of expert others, supported by the assurances of their peers. This is all very authoritative and seemingly trustworthy, and rejecting it is no small feat, but it is still somewhat abstract, somewhat removed from our own direct experience. Rejecting science due to its apparent contradiction with scripture is still far easier than rejecting one's own experience. That hits much closer to home and involves grappling with a far more difficult level of cognitive dissonance.

And that -- the dissonance that comes from questioning one's own conscience and experience -- is what underlies what I'm calling here the Exegetical Panic Defense. This is what happens when an evangelical who has been taught to believe in the Big Gay Evil finally gets to know a flesh-and-blood homosexual human being and starts to think that, actually, this person doesn't really seem like they are evil or a threat or righteously miserable due to their sordid "alternative lifestyle."

For some other Christian, someone relying on something like the Wesleyan Quadrilateral, this can be an instructive experience. Those kinds of Christians are allowed, and even required, to learn from their experience, from their reason and conscience.*** For such people, this new friend (or old friend coming out with new information) will serve as a tonic against the idea that Christians ought to be characterized by an "excessive contempt" for homosexuals. (For a real-world example of just such a case, see this agonized and agonizing e-mail recently received by Andrew Sullivan.)

But for an evangelical relying on the Unilateral, weighing your own experience against the purportedly crystal clear teachings of scripture is verboten. Something's gotta give and that something, in this case, is their own experience, conscience and instincts. That's when the panic-inducing cognitive dissonance kicks in and fight-or-flight takes over. And then anything could happen.

The stakes here are higher than you may appreciate -- their faith, and thus also their sense of identity, is on the line. The Unilateral requires a faith that is so inflexible it becomes brittle -- it can never bend, only break. The crisis occurring for them is much like the one that happened to my college friend in Jericho -- the young-earth creationist who was confronted with the ruins of a neolithic wall thousands of years older than his God. But in addition to the disturbing sense that the certainty they'd been promised is slipping through their fingers, these evangelicals are also forced to cope with the deeply unsettling thought that their own mercy may exceed that of God.

That kind of crisis can result in someone chucking their faith entirely. Or they may try to reassert that certainty even more forcefully. That effort -- fearful, desperate, defensive, hostile, a bit too white-knuckled and wide-eyed, and vindictively proclaiming the rightness of withholding mercy from the undeserving -- manifests itself as something that looks very much like "excessive contempt." These Christians may not like the idea of lashing out against their new friend, but it's less terrifying than the slippery, bewildering landscape of a world in which they can no longer say, "God said it, I believe it, that settles it."

This dynamic doesn't account for the larger causes of the phenomenon described by the Barna survey above. It doesn't explain how it came to be that an excessive contempt for homosexuals is the "most common perception" of American Christianity, for Christians and non-Christians alike. But while it doesn't explain where this perception and this emphatically anti-homosexual teaching comes from, I think it does help to explain why it resonates and persists among evangelical Christians in particular. So I don't see this theory as a broader explanation, but as yet another contributing factor.

We looked earlier at the case of other Christians who seem to begin with a visceral antipathy toward homosexuals and then seek a theological justification for it. This is almost the opposite of that -- Christians who seem, against their own inclinations and their own better judgment -- to adopt this antipathy on the basis of theological teaching they don't seem wholly comfortable with. I'm really not sure which is worse, but this latter case seems almost poignantly tragic for all involved.

OK, next up, Theory No. 5: It's the Politics, Stupid.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

* "Pure" here meaning not only reliable and untainted, but also unitary and wholly without internal conflict, tension, contradiction or paradox. This approach requires that revelation must never contradict or seem to contradict itself. Any such contradictions, real or apparent, would have to be resolved arbitrarily, since this approach provides for -- and allows for -- no principle or mechanism that would enable us to reconcile or decide between competing revelatory trump cards.

** It bears repeating here that Marshall Hall's claim of the pre-eminence of scripture is bogus. He claims, as all Unilateralists do, that he is treating the Bible with great respect as the final arbiter of all things. But this is not what he is really doing. What he is really doing is making his interpretation of the Bible the final arbiter of all things. Therefore what he is ultimately arguing is that he, Marshall Hall, is the final arbiter of all things. His assertion, in other words, is not really that the Bible is inerrant and infallible, but that he is. The ability to make such a claim about oneself without bursting out laughing requires about six different kinds of denial plus a heavy dose of duplicity.

*** It occurs to me here that this discussion inevitably leads us to the story of "Highway 61 Revisited" and to Abraham's sacrifice on Mt. Moriah. Here we have the ultimate example of revelation in conflict with reason, experience and tradition (not to mention in conflict with conscience, sanity and every other example of revelation). I can't find the Kierkegaard just now, so we'll have to save that topic for a future post.

Comments

[BC]

I don't have the link to prove it, but (some years back) the Pentecostal minister in Denver CO who was very anti-gay denied that being gay was inherent rather than a choice. He said something to the effect that if God created a gay person, then he (the minister) would have to rethink the whole "homosexuality is a sin" issue. One of the ways experience will overcome literal Bible. But, a lot of these same people who are harping on the homosexual issue were also supporting segregation in the 1960s. When the political climate turns and dissing the homosexuals is not quite as rewarding at the ballot box - in fact, becomes a liability at the ballot box - then you'll see a 180 degree turn with some of these people.

[burritoboy]

I don't find exegetical panic very explanatory. Part of what we need to explain is the comparatively recent nature of the all-consuming focus on homosexuality. Until very recently, while the evangelical community condemned homosexuality, it wasn't even a prominent issue for them, much less the most prominent one. That's a major change. But, the exegetical panic theory is fairly fixed: for example, evangelicals have been having the same major problems with reconciling the Bible's apparently wildly inaccurate natural science (age of earth, for one) with reality for at least 150 years. Exegetical panic issues don't really change, in that sense.

And, of course, it's hardly like the presence of homosexuals was unknown before, say, 1970. But the evangelical community paid little more than perfunctory attention to homosexuality until after a certain point in very recent history (at some point after 1970, that is).

Second, most exegetical panic issues seem to appear fairly universally across the evangelical Anglo-Saxon world: i.e., English evangelicals have traditionally had either the exact or extremely similar exegetical panic issues with the Bible's inaccurate natural science as American evangelicals have had. But the homosexuality issue is far, far more important to American evangelicals than it is to English ones.

[hapax]

If science claims otherwise, then science must be rejected. That's actually relatively easy to manage if you're not yourself a scientist.

Fred, I'm sure you're aware of the tragic case of Kur Wise, honest geologist and committed Young Earth Creationist. I think it's an exceptional example of the phenomenon you're describing here.

[cjmr]

But, the exegetical panic theory is fairly fixed: for example, evangelicals have been having the same major problems with reconciling the Bible's apparently wildly inaccurate natural science (age of earth, for one) with reality for at least 150 years. Exegetical panic issues don't really change, in that sense.

Actually, new exegetical panic issues have risen and fallen throughout modern history. The exegetical panic issue before the age of the earth was heliocentrism vs. geocentrism. And the one before that was flat earth vs. round earth.

It seem like once the science about Issue X starts to become threatening to a strictly literal reading of the Bible, it becomes an exegetical panic issue. Later, once the science is mainstream and understandable by the average pew-sitter, the panic goes away. The truly odd thing is that the creation/evolution battle has gone on for as long as it has.

[Jesurgislac]

Today I read about two foster parents who were asked by the local authority, to sign a form agreeing that - should any of the children they foster turn out to be gay - they would help: they would tell the child there was nothing wrong with being gay, they'd make the child aware of LGBT youth groups, and if necessary, take their gay foster child to one.

They were fostering one 11-year-old child at the time, whose sexual orientation is (presumably) unknown, probably even to the child. Rather than sign the form, they handed the child back to the care home and resigned as registered foster parents.

While the newspapers that have reported the story have all spun this as "OMG, what a terrible thing to do to good foster parents!" I thought: "How can anyone, having taken a child in and made a commitment to that child, decide that this real commitment is overthrown by a theoretical possibility that they might have, at some point, to put a child's welfare ahead of their religious values?"

(It's also a good example, of course, of how Christianity is conflated with homophobia: Christians standing up and saying, very publicly, "We feel that if we're not allowed to be homophobic, we're not being Christian" without any contradiction and no commentary from any religious leader to say otherwise.)

And before anyone jumps in and says "But suppose you had to violate your principles!" Well, I have thought it over. I am interested in becoming a foster parent: I'm hesitant to make the commitment, because fostering a child is illegal for an unmarried couple where I live (and so for all same-sex couples, with or without a civil partnership), though legal for an LGBT person living alone - only a single person or a married couple can foster. My overriding principle is that if you make a commitment, especially to a child, especially a commitment such as fostering, the commitment to that individual child is paramount: you certainly don't break it just because of theoretical possibilities.

These foster parents could have signed the form, declined to foster any other children and formally resigned as foster parents when this child no longer needed them. But making a public statement that as Christians they had to be homophobic was more important to them than their commitment to this child.

I don't understand that. I see your explanation, Fred, and I understand what you're saying, but I don't grok it.

[cjmr]

I just read that same article, Jes, it was interesting to hear your perspective on it.

[hapax]

because fostering a child is illegal for an unmarried couple where I live

Holy frijoles, Jesu! Is this a national ordinance, or local?

I ask, because there is currently a push to put just such a law up for state referundum vote next year, and even in this VERY conservative,
Southern Baptist, redneck hellhole of a state, the proposal is quite controversial.

Maybe we're just more desperate for foster parents than your locality is.

[hapax]

Uggh. I just read the article. This is the statement that jumped out at me:

"They were saying that we had to be prepared to talk about sexuality with 11-year-olds, which I don't think is appropriate anyway"

Dear Lord, these folks have three children of their own. Surely they know that puberty is usually well under way by age eleven. When do they think it's appropriate to start talking about sexuality? After their ignorant teenager has knocked up the neighbor girl or been raped?

As for me, once my kids were old enough to ask "Why is that lady so fat?", I figure they were old enough to start getting honest answers.

[Frank]

A God worthy of such a title would be trivially capable of constructing a text such that it was at once unambiguous in its meaning, beautiful in its descriptive power and persuasive in its arguments. If he chose to deliver this text to his potential worshipers by writing it on the side of a mountain, or coming to them in their dreams, its message would be genuinely transparent regardless.

The absence of any such text is quite telling, from the point of view of this atheist. Instead we have any number of collections of nonsense, just-so stories, and fraudulent accounts of events that never happened, not very good poems, lists of inconsequential stuff, and so on.

Fred mis-steps on science too. Primary school children routinely do science. Not breakthrough science, and not the most rigorous work, but still science. You can get a class of ten year olds to suggest why something happens, plan an experiment to test it, predict the outcome and then see what actually happens. We do this for lots of other key areas too, we routinely teach young children to write stories (although a lot of them will never write anything more complicated than a postcard when they leave school) to investigate mathematical problems (though most will never use more than trivial arithmetic in adulthood) and how to program a simple computer (once again something they'll probably never bother to use in adulthood) and so on.

You do not have to be Paul Erdős to do mathematics, any more than you have to be Asafa Powell to run 100 meters. You are more than adequately equipped to stare up at the night sky and figure out that the world is not fixed in space without relying on any experts. You don't need to trust me that 0.9... is equal to 1, you can figure it out yourself. The idea that scientists are separate to and different from ordinary people is a poisonous mistake.

[Jesurgislac]

Hapax: Holy frijoles, Jesu! Is this a national ordinance, or local?

National. I live in Scotland, and in Scotland the national law still says "single person or married couple". In England and Wales, the national law was revised a few years ago, and now says "single person or couple in long-term committed relationship".

[Judy]

This is such a heated issue and there are obviously christians who believe that homosexuality is not a sin (and some that are homosexual themselves)... We always imagine a perfect God who created everyone in his likeness, but that can't be the case. He created so many different people with different, evil characteristics. Everyone should read "Jesus Drank, Judas Repented, and God Divorced His Bride". It's a great book that delves into questions about that bible that we always assume we know the answer to, but turns out we don't.

http://www.happyabout.info/myfaith/jesusdrank.php

[Jon]

It seem like once the science about Issue X starts to become threatening to a strictly literal reading of the Bible, it becomes an exegetical panic issue.

Which plays into how homosexuality has become such a pivotal issue. I think that when homosexuality was taken off the books as being a psychological dysfunction there was a exegetical panic. When homosexuality could be blamed on bad parenting or immoral choices, there was nothing that needed to be reconciled; the bible said it was bad and so did science. It was win-win, and there was nothing to get up in arms about.
Once that situation changed and reasonable people became more accepting of homosexuality as a simple fact of life (and homosexuals as people essentially like themselves, irrespective of who they seek out sexual relationships with), it was time to panic.
I think the initial cases of AIDS fed into this as well; it gave the panic-stricken fundies a chance to say, "See? We told you it was bad, and now God's taking the trouble to prove it, since you were too busy being reasonable and relying on your experiences and consciences to read the bible correctly."

[Jesurgislac]

Jon: ... "See? We told you it was bad, and now God's taking the trouble to prove it, since you were too busy being reasonable and relying on your experiences and consciences to read the bible correctly."

Which gave reasonable people the chance to respond: "So God also hates (a) people who don't use condoms; (b) people who get blood transfusions; (c) people who are addicted to IV drugs (well, they were probably cool about that); (d) prostitutes (those too - never mind Mary Magdalen) (e) women who are married to men who like to have anal sex with other men (f) women who are married to men who like to have sex with prostitutes (g) the children of any of the above."

[Jesurgislac]

What I mean is - and not that I think Jon was suggesting he agreed with this theory - was that it was obvious from the very beginning that there were as many large holes in the theory that AIDS was God's wrath as there is in the theories that the destruction of New Orleans, or the California wildfires, or the flooding in England this last summer, or the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, were "God's wrath". Because if these things are "God's wrath", it follows that this God's wrath has very, very bad aim.

[Frank]

“Because if these things are "God's wrath", it follows that this God's wrath has very, very bad aim.”

What was it the newspaper adverts said?

ADULTERERS! SODOMITES! MOTHERS BREAST FEEDING INFANTS OVER THE AGE OF FOUR WEEKS! REPENT AND BE SAVED . . .

[Jon]

Very true, and no, I don't agree with the God's Wrath theory, as I don't believe in God, wrathful or otherwise.

[Ursula L]

Because if these things are "God's wrath", it follows that this God's wrath has very, very bad aim.

Which, in turn, can lead to the conclusion that accurate aim is unimportant. If it is okay for god to have bad aim dispensing justice, then it is appropriate for humans to have equally bad aim - to want better aim is to want to be better than god.

So objecting to a justice system that convicts innocent people, or a war which creates destruction far beyond the wrong it was supposed to fix, or to children dying from lack of medical care that their parents can't afford becomes an objection to the natural, godly order of cruel punishment to many for the sins of a few. Or hubris in demanding that humans do a better job at justice than god.

[Steven S.]

Fred mis-steps on science too. Primary school children routinely do science.

Frank, I think you missed the point; the science required to not accept young-earth creationism relies upon a lot of experiments that people don't do, and accept because someone else has done them so often (and so much is built upon them) that they're considered "true".

And, if you're dead-set on believing that Your Version of Scripture (YVOS) is true, then it's easy to accept that other people didn't do the science right, or they're trying to mislead you, or somesuch. Just because kids have done experiments doesn't mean that the experimental model's become dominant in their heads. If it comes down to "I believe the physicists I can't really understand or I believe YVOS", it's easy to think that "I understand Scripture, it makes it clear, I believe *it* rather than anything else."

To me, the Krebs Citric Acid Cycle is received knowledge -- I was a physics student in college, not a bio student, and so I don't know and have never done the experiments to make me believe in the KCAC. If I believed in a scripture where it was written, Book of Lysenko, Chapter 3, verse 2: "Adenosine Triphosphate is an abomination before the nations; any who partake of it shall be accursed before them", I would have to decide whether I believed in that scripture, or in the words of my fellow science students, who believed the people who'd done the work, or could do it themselves.

[MikailBorg]

Frank: Primary school children routinely do science. Not breakthrough science, and not the most rigorous work, but still science. You can get a class of ten year olds to suggest why something happens, plan an experiment to test it, predict the outcome and then see what actually happens. [snip] You don't need to trust me that 0.9... is equal to 1, you can figure it out yourself. The idea that scientists are separate to and different from ordinary people is a poisonous mistake.

Every time a Mythbusters story appears on Slashdot, someone complains of the "psuedoscience" of the show, and I always find that quite annoying. They are testing hypotheses perfectly well, thank you; it may not be "rigorous" or "groundbreaking", and they even make errors on occasion; but anyone who encourages critical thinking and skepticism of unusual claims should be applauded, not dismissed. (Especially if they do so in such an entertainingly dramatic fashion.)

[Geds]

Because if these things are "God's wrath", it follows that this God's wrath has very, very bad aim.

I remember right after Katrina, Jon Stewart pointed out that the French Quarter was fine, but the three parishes surrounding it had been swamped. His conclusion was that the problem isn't being a in the middle of sin, it was being sin adjacent.

[cjmr]

Holy frijoles, Jesu! Is this a national ordinance, or local?

I ask, because there is currently a push to put just such a law up for state referundum vote next year, and even in this VERY conservative,Southern Baptist, redneck hellhole of a state, the proposal is quite controversial.

So I spent 30 minutes looking at our state's foster program web site trying to figure out what the law was here--the 'guidelines' say single person or married couple, but with absolutely no indication as to whether the single person has to be a single person living alone or not. Since they only started allowing single foster parents about eight years ago, I have a feeling that single probably does include the caveat 'living alone'.

[Jon]

Some further thoughts on the "God's Wrath" thing.
Clearly reason doesn't enter into the process of determining that some event is evidence of God's wrath, and that sort of thinking isn't even limited to fundies observing something horrible happening to someone else; all too often the "victims" can come to believe that they themselves have called down the wrath.
(I put victims in quotes not to in any way diminish their very real suffering, but simply to point out that while they may be victims of circumstance they are not actually victims of God's wrath)
I have a friend who, at thirteen, came to the realization that he was gay. The next day his father killed himself.
To this day (20+ years later), there is still some part of him that believes that his father had somehow intuited that he was gay, and, unwilling to accept having a gay son, shot himself.
While this doesn't specifically call on a belief in God's wrath, it does suggest a confusion of coincidence with causality that is at the core of that kind of thinking. That his father actually killed himself because a)he had cancer b)had lousy health insurance that likely wouldn't have covered the expense of treating him and c)had a very good life insurance policy which paid out even in the event of suicide can't really dissuade him from believing that his father's death was his punishment for being gay.
For my part, I had a similar experience with my own father's death.
I was driving home from work and spotted a bumper sticker on the car in front of me that said something like "In case of Rapture, this car will be unmanned."
I made several derogatory comments about this to myself, and, if I recall correctly, made a "jerking off" motion.
When I got home I learned that my father was in a coma after suffering a massive heart attack and that, becuase it took so long to revive him, he was likely brain dead. Three days later he was gone.
Now, as mentioned, I don't believe in God - and certainly don't believe in a PMD version of God - yet there is some part of me that, against all reason, thinks that maybe God struck my dad down to get back at me for my derisive attitude towards one of His chosen.
It's ridiculous, I know, and I don't really believe it, but the thought remains.
So really, that it would involve lousy aim and makes no reasonable sense is irrelevant when it comes to forming a belief that is inherently unreasonable.
Even the lousy aim can be part of the wrath. I personally would much rather have been the one to get "struck down," but choosing to take someone as dear to me as my dad (over a year later the fact that he's gone still eats away at me every day) makes it that much more deliciously cruel to God. Similarly, it could be suggested that the people God is mad at should feel guilty for the fact that their sinfullness called down God's wrath on a bunch of innocent people.
Again, to be clear, I don't believe that God killed my dad in revenge for my lack of faith, as I don't beleive that there is a God, but if it's possible for me to even entertain the notion, against all reason, it must be so much easier for someone who does think that way to accept the notion of God's random wrath.

[Jeff]

To me, the Krebs Citric Acid Cycle is received knowledge

I went to Wiki and found "A simplified view of the process". I'm glad that was "simplified"! I kinda understand what's going on there, but boy howdy, that's not easy to for someone whose last chemistry was eons ago.

The discussion on whether it's the "Krebs Cycle" or "Citric Acid Cycle" was quite interesting!

[cjmr]

In one of my microbiology classes, we had a test the sole question of which was "Draw a diagram of and explain the citric acid cycle." It was worth 1/3 of the final grade in the course.

[MikeJ]

Every time a Mythbusters story appears on Slashdot, someone complains of the "psuedoscience" of the show, and I always find that quite annoying. They are testing hypotheses perfectly well, thank you; it may not be "rigorous" or "groundbreaking", and they even make errors on occasion; but anyone who encourages critical thinking and skepticism of unusual claims should be applauded, not dismissed.

Most of the time the problem isn't the science, it's the engineering. They very often fail, under tight time and money constraints, to build decent experimental apparatuses. When the experiment fails, they then declare victory. Often times the only thing they've proven is "Jamie and Adam were unable to build a machine that does x."

That said, sometimes they do get things right, and even if the science if wrong, explosions are cool. The show is fun to watch, and can make people think. Just don't take their word as final on the bustitude of any given myth.

[cjmr's husband]

bustitude

That word belongs on the other thread: "This movie/magazine/beach did not have enough bustitude."

[syfr]

Jesurgislac,

I find it amazing that the foster parents in that story have a problem with, "...'but not only that, to be prepared to explain how gay people date.' " I've always assumed gay people dated the same way as straight people: one thinks the other is cute/interesting, asks them out, is accepted or rejected, if accepted, they go to the movies and maybe kiss. I just can't wrap my head around thinking that gay people are that different from non-gay people.

[indifferent children]

> I've always assumed gay people dated the same way as straight people

No. I'm no expert, but there seems to be a "wide stance" involved somehow.

[PurpleGirl]

MikeJ re Mythbusters -- yup, their explosions are cool. They make things go boom.
And they have girls building machines and working with power tools.)

[MikailBorg]

Most of the time the problem isn't the science, it's the engineering. They very often fail, under tight time and money constraints, to build decent experimental apparatuses. When the experiment fails, they then declare victory. Often times the only thing they've proven is "Jamie and Adam were unable to build a machine that does x."

Agreed completely - though that is sometimes the point; "While the result may not be impossible, we found it difficult enough to reproduce that it might be considered unlikely at best."

At least twice (bullets falling from the sky, and the flight attendant surviving a fall from altitude) their experimental results contradicted documented reality, and they were forced to admit that their experiment was inadequate, or at least that a whole lot of random factors aligned perfectly in the documented event. That's the fun part of science: at its best, it knows it's not infallible.

[Dahne]

I would just like to mention that following that link to Andrew Sullivan's blog led to very interesting reading, and then to the opening of Fresh Prince of Bel-Air dubbed in Italian.

[Jesurgislac]

syfr: I've always assumed gay people dated the same way as straight people: one thinks the other is cute/interesting, asks them out, is accepted or rejected, if accepted, they go to the movies and maybe kiss.

"What does a lesbian bring on a second date?" - "A U-Haul."

That joke's so old it's on wikipedia: maybe it was the only lesbian joke this couple had both heard. And they didn't know what a U-Haul is, and were afraid to ask...

[hf]

Wide stance does not apply because the guy involved 'is not gay'.

[Vendor Xeno]

Fred, the one problem I have with the exegetical panic defense is actually a problem you yourself addressed in regards to certain other potential explanations, and that's that it fails to explain why homosexuals stand out so sharply in relationship to all other people damned to hell or unclean in the eyes of god or whatever.

I agree that it may be an influencing factor, but were it that relevant, then anyone that constituted as not right in the eyes of god, but who was nice, would generate the same conflict. Muslims, jews, papists, pagans, they all suffer a certain degree of excessive contempt from the evangelical front, but nothing on par with what homosexuals do, (at least in my perception and according to the Barna Group.) This means that even in cases where people are influenced/affeted by this contradiction between experience and belief, something has to make homosexuality stand out as somehow significantly worse than belonging to a heathen faith or denying god altogether or being an adulterer, and so forth.

[mmack]

Hapax,

I read your linked article about Kurt Wise and all I could think of was the line from Inherit the Wind:

"I am more interested in the 'Rock of Ages' than I am in the age of rocks."

[Fishbone McGonigle]

"What does a lesbian bring on a second date?" - "A U-Haul."

I don't get it.

[Jake]

Because if these things are "God's wrath", it follows that this God's wrath has very, very bad aim.

Not so much "bad aim" as that the smiting beam seems to be wide-angle. That's pretty consistent with the Old Testament view of God: God's retribution is swift, absolute, and pretty indiscriminately targeted. Just look at the flood, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the slaying of (presumably innocent) Egyptian first-born, the permanent feud against Amelekites, and so forth. The only one of those which a Biblical attempt is made to even justify with regard to the likelihood of collateral damage is Sodom and Gomorrah.

So pointing out how indiscriminate God's ostensible wrath is doesn't convince the lunatics. They've already bought into the idea of God as immoderate and ill-targeted in his chastisement.

[burritoboy]

"new exegetical panic issues have risen and fallen throughout modern history. The exegetical panic issue before the age of the earth was heliocentrism vs. geocentrism. And the one before that was flat earth vs. round earth."

No, evangelicals still have the same problems with those Biblical natural science errors as they always did. Some still insist the earth is both flat and the center of the universe. The sub-issues of the Bible's natural science errors tend to cycle in the popular imagination, but they're all present and generally equally as important at all times (if the Bible is in error on the flat earth, then it's other natural science pronouncements are equally dubious).

[Jon]

So pointing out how indiscriminate God's ostensible wrath is doesn't convince the lunatics. They've already bought into the idea of God as immoderate and ill-targeted in his chastisement.

I've also encounted the the attitude that the world belongs to God, so He can do whatever the hell He wants with it. So basically, "collateral damage shmollateral damage."

[Freelance_Physicist]

@ Fishbone McGonigle

Look up U-Haul Lesbian on wikipedia.

[G-Do]

Jake said: Not so much "bad aim" as that the smiting beam seems to be wide-angle...Just look at the flood...

And don't even get started on Job's wives, children, and livestock.

[Bugmaster]

And don't even get started on Job's wives, children, and livestock.

It's ok, God gave him new ones at the end, so it's all good.

[G-Do]

Wow, great post Fred! I really, really like this theory. I feel that it explains a lot of the emotional intensity underlying modern fundagelical homophobia, and it's strikingly similar to my ideas about the causes of the homophobia surge. I think the argument can be rephrased neatly in terms of Maslow's hierarchy of needs - fundamentalists need certainty, which is to say, safety and stability. Dread is the master they serve.

As others have pointed out already, the exegetical panic theory doesn't explain the when, where, or who involved in homophobia. Why now? Why in America? Why the gays? It also doesn't explain the what in great depth - if fundamentalists crave order and stability, it stands to reason that they fear uncertainty and unpredictability - so why is that? Is it simply a defense mechanism against the ordinary hurts of life, or is it something else? What does a unilateral reliance on dogma protect the fundamentalist from? Dread of what?

If you can give an integrated answer to all of these questions, I think you will have fatally speared the beast.

[pecunium]

Jesurgislac: I am of a mixed mind on the couple who refused to foster. On the one hand, that sort of rejection is horrid, on the other they knew what they couldn't do. They might have (and I know people who would) decided to sign the form, and; should the child be homosexual, try to fix him/her; for the child's own good.

re the Mythbusters: I find it interesting when they come to a conclusion based on the research they do (the one which comes most to mind is that of splinters on warships). They said it was busted; when the casualty reports of the Sick and Hurt Board plainly say it happned. I saw, as soon as they bult their model, what was going to happen, because they didn't do it well, and aimed at the part which was least solid.

That said, they are doing good science, even when they fail. They present a falsifiable theory, and test it. Just as with real science they get it wrong sometimes, but that doesn't invalidate the method.

I like them for it; lots.

[pharoute]

So how does the Evangelical Unilateral resolve Jesus' birth narratives, specifically the genealogy? Or the Creation stories? It seems like those would cause a bigger panic than finding out your family member/friend/minister is gay (sorry not gay, it was all just a terrible misunderstanding after having an attack of restless leg syndrome in the public restroom off I-205)

[G-Do]

Lots of people said: Mythbusters

The coolest Mythbusters I ever saw was the one where they built a crossbow - made entirely of newspaper and rubber bands (I think) - that could fire a prison shank with enough force to penetrate a human trachea. A prisoner had allegedly done something similar, and they wanted to see if they could replicate the stunt. Pretty badass, all things considered. Mythbusters is the current incarnation of the same spirit of cunning that previously inhabited MacGyver.

[G-Do]

pharoute said: So how does the Evangelical Unilateral resolve Jesus' birth narratives, specifically the genealogy? Or the Creation stories?

Hermeneutical Tetris, played at level 19+.

[Scott]

What he is really doing is making his interpretation of the Bible the final arbiter of all things. Therefore what he is ultimately arguing is that he, Marshall Hall, is the final arbiter of all things. His assertion, in other words, is not really that the Bible is inerrant and infallible, but that he is. The ability to make such a claim about oneself without bursting out laughing requires about six different kinds of denial plus a heavy dose of duplicity.

That's no different than how any liberal interprets any law (statute or constitution) - they are "living documents" to be infallibly interpreted by the liberal. Besides, Marshall Hall isn't necessarily demanding the power to toss people in jail by calling something a sin. The left reading the law or the constitution in a similar manner pretty much is demanding the power to toss the disobedient into jail.

When you judge the constitutionality of a proposed law by whether you consider the claimed or intended result moral, you are just like Hall.

OK, next up, Theory No. 5: It's the Politics, Stupid.

Oh, goody, "they're just doing it to stop us from being Compassionate(tm) and implementing Hillary-Care"

[not_bot]

From the Sullivan link, about an American Christian who has a foreign friend out himself. The quote is him talking to his equally devout Christian sister -
“Do you think, at one of the most difficult moments in his life, I was going to turn it into a nightmare?”

This is very self/American centered. If the friend was German, for example, most likely the only difficult part would have been trying to figure out how to deal with someone who is already so extreme in their eyes that it is as likely he was worried more about his friend than the other way round. In Germany, gay civil unions are pretty common - after all, the head of the Berlin state government and the leader of a major political party (FDP - sort of like Rockefeller Rupublicans) are both 'married' gay men.

This extremely narrow framework is what makes part of the 'excess contempt' stand out in relief. For people who have grown up with gay friends, especially ones who make no major effort to either hide or flaunt their personal tastes in bed/life partners, encountering a group of people who look at normal people from such a restricted perspective makes their beliefs of hate and shame stand in stark contrast to the apparent teachings of a man who taught that love was the way to live with one another.

[scottbot]

Navigation systems override - fire retro thrusters - impulse drive active

'That's no different than how any liberal interprets any law (statute or constitution) - they are "living documents" to be infallibly interpreted by the liberal.'

Scottbot was just knocked for a loop, but all is well again. When Scottbot reads 'Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof' it seems there isn't much to interpret - Scottbot being a non-denomational piece of machinery, not a born-again Christian nation builder. And yet, it is 'liberals' attempting to read that text to force mandatory school prayer - as there is no way for anyone to stop silent prayer? (Though the Chinese apparently feel they can regulate the process of reincarnation.)

GYRO OVERRIDE - STABILIZERS FULL

Reading 'The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments...' seems to suggest that the Constitution is indeed a living document, to be interpreted by the living, and when found wanting, to be changed by the living. As yet, Scottbot's finely honed zombie detectors remain inactive, so the Republic is still safe (though the power of the Dark Side clouding the future is, I see).

Scottbot still is not certain whether allowing human females to vote was part of the vast liberal conspiracy, and intends to ask the Original Programmer(TM) about this matter concerning the 19th Amendment - 'The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.' This seems the sort of law that only a liberal could infallibly interpret - for anyone else, there certainly seems to be an incredible amount of confusion in actually applying this point of constitutional law - for example, can only a senator in a Senate cloakroom (or bathroom with a wide stance) actually have the right to vote 'on account of sex?' Only a liberal can infallibly know that sex here actually means the number of X and Y chromosomes, and not what physical activity one or more humans are engaged in when exercising their right of franchise.

As for Amendment 26- 'The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age.' - Scottbot has toiled enough in the garden of ambiguity, and will let someone else demonstrate how only a liberal could infallibly interpret that 'eighteen years of age' actually means eighteen years of age.

HYPERDRIVE ON - WHEEEEE