Addressing Leviticus (You Know Which Part)

"Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind: it is abomination." Leviticus 18:22

"If a man also lie with mankind as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination. They shall surely be put to death: their blood shall be upon them." -Leviticus 20:13

If you are gay, you have had these words thrown in your face more times than you can count by biblical literalists attempting to excuse homophobic discrimination. I would just like to point out a couple of things regarding these quotes that these folks have overlooked.

First, even if taken literally, these particular verses in no way address lesbians. It seems they are in the clear. Second, if you are a gay man, you would not lie with mankind as you would with womankind because you would not lie with womankind at all. So, I am not really seeing how these verses apply to gay men either. 

If you are bisexual, well, I don't know what to tell you.

And then of course there are the other bits of Leviticus which go completely ignored. The same people calling same-sex relationships abominations forget that they are supposed to kill their kids if they use curse words (20:9), they should be protesting the practices of Red Lobster and any other place that sells shellfish (11:9-12), they should be passing laws against having tattoos (19:28), and the list goes on and on (and that is just the Leviticus stuff, let alone the rest of the Bible).

While there are certainly other Bible verses that are used to denounce homosexuality, these particular Leviticus verses are flimsy at best and do not hold up to the slightest bit of scrutiny.

As I have said elsewhere, using the Bible to denounce homosexuality is a pretense. If this were really about the Bible, they would be publicly protesting a host of things they do not protest while supporting a host of things that they do not currently support. Their focus however is on using the Bible as a weapon against the gay community. As much as they say they are not against gay people and the are simply trying to adhere to the Bible, they have made it very clear that their idea of holiness is cherry-picking the parts of the Bible they like, which includes the parts they deem to be homophobic and not the parts about loving thy neighbour.