What is the key issue at stake with marriage equality? It's love, and do unto others as you want others to do unto you. And the all encompassing love of God. Using religion in this is ludicrous, since the Bible clearly states that man is created in his image. And that really, as a nation, we need to move past using the Bible as a valid source of fact in political issues. Because the Bible isn't scientific or even solid in its arguing. It isn't based on facts. It's based on beliefs. And beliefs are not objective, but subjective.
And it's about dragging the US out of the backwards movements that refuses to release its hold and let this country truly step out into the twenty-first century.
We give you
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bitchesofbritin's lecture on civil rights, biblical interpretation and modern day Pharisees, with illustrations of Love, Family, Friendship, Partnership and Marriage.
If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
When looking at the Bible and those that use it as an offensive weapon, I am reminded of the Pharisees who came to Jesus hoping to trap him into contradicting the law of Moses. Mormons, fundamentalist evanglical Christians (modern day Pharasiees) may wish to remember what the law is based on, and how the Bible was interprested and written.
Pharisee: 1. a member of a Jewish sect that flourished during the 1st century b.c. and 1st century a.d. and that differed from the Sadducees chiefly in its strict observance of religious ceremonies and practices, adherence to oral laws and traditions, and belief in an afterlife and the coming of a Messiah.
2. (lowercase) a sanctimonious, self-righteous, or hypocritical person. One of the Pharisees tested Jesus with a question, "Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" (Matthew 22:36 NIV). Jesus replied, " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments" (Matthew 22:37-40 NIV).
The Pharisees tried to trick Jesus, but he was onto them. It is not strict observance to the letter of the law, it is your loving spirit, your love for your fellow man-- that which asks you do you have a right relationship with God based on love and trust, as well as a right relationship with your fellow man or neighbor, this is the greatest commandment.
The thing is, and historians agree, when the New Testament speaks of homosexuality being wrong, it is not talking about homosexuality per se. The exact translation from the Greek is for pederasty, or not having catamites or young boys as sex slaves. THAT is what the New Testament is referring to. The reason homosexuals were often classified as child sexual predators is from early Christian interpretation. And, the religious right is still clinging to false interpretations. (There is even extensive arguement that homosexuality or even pederasty was what Paul was talking about, due to the choice of Greek words he used, he may have been talking about softnest of fortitude and not sexuality, AT ALL.)
Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 
Sure, in a lot of ways, I am just like you. I wanna be happy, I want some security, a little extra money in my pocket, but in many ways, my life is nothing like yours. Why should it be? Do we all have to have the same lives to have the same rights? I thought that diversity was what this country was all about. In the gay community, we have drag queens, leather daddies, trannies, and couples with children - every color of the rainbow. My mother's standing way in the back with some friends. My friends. She once told me that people are like snowflakes; every one special and unique... and in the morning you have to shovel 'em off the driveway. But being different is what makes us all the same. It's what makes us family.
- Michael Novotny-Bruckner
I used to hate it when Brian would say, "There are two kinds of straight people in this world - the ones who hate you to your face, and the ones who hate you behind your back," because I knew that wasn't true, there are plenty of straight people who don't hate us. But the ones who do no longer have to do it behind our backs, they can do it in the White House, in the churches, on television, in the streets!
- Melanie Marcus
Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; 1but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.Blessed are the peacemakers for they are the children of God.
quotes from 1 Corinthians 13 1-12. Matthew 5:12, Matthew 22:36-40, History Channel 'Homosexuality and the New Testement, Random House unabridged dictionary.'*All icons and banners used here are for sharing. Please credit
zaipixie for her brilliant graphics!*
