Many of us who haven't bailed out of Christianity altogether are way beyond agonizing over the "clobber passages"--the six Biblical references to homosexuality that the religious right continues using to justify its hatred and discrimination. Still, it's gratifying to hear yet another voice that refutes the fundamentalists on their own terms.
It's begging for disappointment to hope that yet another cogent argument can overcome bigotry, any more than it was dispelled decades ago by John Boswell or John McNeill. But a British evangelical theologian, the Rev. Canon Steve Chalke, has this to say about misreadings of Paul on the subject of male sexuality in the Roman Empire:
“Our poor understanding of the New Testament
has brought misery, persecution, oppression and rejection to countless hundreds
of thousands and millions of LGBT people. It’s time to apologize for the
mistakes we’ve made and move on.”
You can watch his eloquent
and energetic talk via Huffington Post.
