Win, Lose, Drew by Drew Litton for February 27, 2014

And they use religion as an excuse. When Jesus said to get to heaven, one must love the least of these, not hate them.

I’m an agnostic and even I know he called it an abomination. I don’t understand how anyone can be a Christian and change their belief in the Bible, because their son, daughter, niece or nephew comes out as gay. Again, I couldn’t care less either way just don’t let the pols reverse discriminate for gays as they have for every other minority group. Actually they do already do reverse discriminate for gays in some places in this country.

And in this country, you are entitled to your NARROW religious beliefs. I among many would fight to make sure that although I disagree with you, that you keep the right to follow your beleifs. HOWEVER, I would also fight to prevent YOU from forcing your beleifs on others. Live long, and allow other to live as they choose.

The intolerant are not an endangered species.

" God created marriage between 1 man & 1 woman. "except when the man has more than one wife, and maybe a concubine or two. How about just having a child by his wife’s handmaiden without any type of religious union. Frank, so you think you know your religious texts?

Or even better, Leviticus 19:28

“Do not engrave images on your body.”

So until the religious right starts picketing any sport where the players sport body ink, they can shove their nonsense up their patooties.

The real bigots are the lefties who complain of prejudice. Got it. So all it takes to be a bigot is to notice bigotry?

Why doesn’t being rich work like that?

Thanks, Drew. You’re a great guy to bring attention to the sad presence of rampant homophobia in sports.

So, I presume, based on your ignorant arrogance, that you’re in the privileged heterosexual majority. So, you should choose to be gay today, and just give it a try. You might change your mind and want to know every gay person that crosses your path. :-D

Okay, I understand the concept of the biblical view of marriage.

Even though the Bible references polygamy and concubines, as has been pointed out above, I am willing to accept the fact that people are willing to ignore major contradictions in order to “keep the faith”. So, I will accept the premise (however poorly supported) that the bible says it’s one man, one woman.

Can biblical believers accept a “civil union”, where legalities afforded to married spouses can be conferred onto life partners, without using the religious term/category “marriage”?

In other words, do you have an objection to gay marriage (a concept revolving around religious belief) or do you have an objection to gays becoming life partners (a concept where religion is kept out of the discussion, but only legalities stay the same)?

Oh, please. God didn’t invent marriage; man did. Adam and Eve weren’t married. God invented concubines…. and mistresses….. and polygamy….. and many other forms of relationship, but the first ceremonial marriage didn’t occur until the Egyptian pharaohs started formalizing succession. And I’m sure you won’t try to make a case that Yahweh, the Hebrew god of the time who evolved into the upper-case Judeo-Christian God, helped the Egyptians do that while masquerading as Ra?

“It’s not that we hate the person, we hate the sin. God created marriage between 1 man & 1 woman.”And because you and your church believe that, the rest of us must also adhere to it? If those who don’t live as you prescribe, it’s us that are forcing our views on you?You can believe whatever it is you want to. It’s your right to practice your religion, disapprove of gays and/or any other group, and refuse to personally disapprove of anyone’s marriage or divorce to your heart’s content. It’s none of my business and I won’t even pretend to care. However it becomes my business when you try to force your beliefs on me. I don’t have to practice your religion, believe your beliefs, or live by your standards. I don’t have to define my marriage to a consenting adult based on your beliefs.

Take another look. While the bible labels a great many things as “sin” and anti-God (which I guess sin IS anti-God), if I remember correctly it states that God hates one thing: divorce.

" The part of the bible that denigrates homosexuality (Leviticus) also says you must not eat shellfish or wear blended fabrics. Are you committing those “sins”?".Now THAT i will have to look up. Thanks for the heads up.

Mary Douglas, the sociologist, has an interesting analysis of Leviticus. She argues, as I recall, that the fundamental principle is that what were considered to be natural categories should be kept separate.

Gosh, it’s been several years since I read her book on Leviticus, but I’ll try to dig something out of my memory. It’s a structuralist argument — related to Levi-Strauss’ idea that totemism, for example, is a pre-scientific way of organizing the world (and usually placing human organization into an isomorphy with the “natural” categories — or really vice versa, the human categories become the basis for “natural” categorization). The ban on pork, for example, is because pigs combine the characteristics of two different types — those that chew cud and those that don’t have cloven hoofs — is that the way it works? — well, whatever it is, cows are on one side, horses on the other, and pigs annoyingly sit in the middle. The same with shell fish, they don’t have scales like proper fish, so they violate the boundaries. And that’s why you can’t wear a polyester blend — natural clothing doesn’t mix things up. Notice that she completely ignores the idea that there is any problem with disease and pork or shell fish. (All this fits in with her arguments in “Natural Symbols” and “Purity and Danger”, as well. Some societies, she says, are very concerned about maintaining boundaries, and the Hebrews were like that.) Marvin Harris has made a pretty good critique of her argument on economic and materialist grounds (he calls himself a cultural materialist), and though I think Douglas’ argument is pretty, I’ve been persuaded by Harris that economic factors are more important than these mental constructs of structuralism. I don’t know if all this makes any sense — as I say, it’s been a while since I’ve looked at this stuff.

And in some cultures, men and women do stay away from each other.

Gosh, my friends, it’s been years since I’ve read this stuff. I’ll try to do a little reminder, but it may take me a couple of days. But quickly, one point that Douglas is making is that the food prohibitions — against pork and shell fish — have to be seen in the context of the whole set of laws, and taken together these seem to have a consistent theme of category boundaries. Marvin Harris, on the other hand, says that the Hebrew food prohibitions have to be seen in the context of food prohibitions in other cultures, and he says that they can all be explained in material terms. Beyond that, I can’t go right now, but I’ll get back to you.

More seriously -First - I think it’s important in all sciences, and especially in the human sciences, not to move to “why” too quickly, before the “what” is well established — especially in the human sciences, because a partial what can be used to support all kinds of crazy whys.Second — the why in the human sciences is almost always going to be some kind of interpretation, and that interpretation is likely going to be heavily theory laden.With those principles in mind, the relevant passage in Mary Douglas is chapter three in “Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo”. I like this book a lot, but that doesn’t mean that I buy everything she says. (She also wrote a book specifically on Leviticus, but that book isn’t actually so relevant to this discussion). In another book, “Natural Symbols”, she talks a lot about boundary maintenance, and I had a false memory that she used boundary maintenance in “P&D”, but I was wrong. She argues something more like a standard structuralist line. In brief, and without going into a lot of detail, she argues that the categories in Leviticus reflect and symbolize a general cosmology; for all the detail you have to read the whole book, but it has to do with her general discussion of pollution and dirt and holiness. In Hebrew, she says, the word usually translated “holy” really means “set apart” — so setting things apart has a particular importance in Hebrew religious thought. And she connects all this with a wider comparative account of pollution in various societies.+But as I said, Marvin Harris says that this is all wrong. In “Good to Eat: Riddles of Food and Culture” he says that food rules always turn out to make good economic sense.+So each argument sits within a theory — Douglas’ argument sits within a structuralist theory, Marvin’s argument sits within his cultural materialist theory. You pay your money and you take your choice. I find good in each. Harris’ argument about food makes sense to me in general, but its weakness here is that he doesn’t take the rest of the rules in Leviticus into account. Douglas’ argument makes sense of the whole of Leviticus, but it’s hard to attach it to anything real — or material.+One point Douglas makes is that if you are going to ask what’s up with the laws in Leviticus, you should also be prepared to ask what’s up with the laws in your own culture. Often it’s hard to see the rules in your own culture, because you swim in them, but she argues that in fact we have a whole set of rules about hygiene and dirt and that these rules don’t always make a lot of “scientific” sense. I would certainly say that our culture has a lot of anxiety about food, and it’s worth asking why.+I don’t know if any of that is of any interest. I recommend both “Purity and Danger” and “Good to Eat” — they’re lots of fun, no matter what you think of them in the end.