"...murder, adultery, idolatry, homosexuality..."

Except that three of those are deadly sins, the fourth isn't. It pretty much only crops up as an issue in Leviticus; their may be other brief mentions elsewhere, but the whole "a man shall not lay with another man as with a woman" bit is all his work.

Leviticus, bless him, was a nutter. He also then makes a load of other crazy statements about making animal sacrifices, bangs on about how women who are menstruating (and by extension, anyone who sits on a seat, lies on a bed, or otherwise interacts with objects the women have used) are unclean and cannot enter a temple without the aforementioned sacrifices, how you can't have your hair "rounded at the temples" or wear "clothes made of two different cloths", and so forth.

Essentially what it boils down to is that "Evangelicals" (or whatever they want to be called) are just believing in selective parts of the Bible that happen to fit with their personal convictions, so it's no good demanding they be logically consistent.

There's also the issue that Jesus made a big deal about loving thy neighbour, and I'm pretty sure "persecuting a group of people based purely on something that they do between themselves in the privacy of their own home to no-one's detriment" wasn't one of his plans.

Not only that, there's the huge contradiction between the crotchety, vindictive, and somewhat unpleasant Old Testament God, and the more friendly and jovial New Testament God. Depending on what Evangelicals are trying to convince you of they'll happily switch between the two, even though they take rather contradictory stances.

Er, went on for a bit longer than I planned to, but this is one of my pet peeves. The seperation of church and state seems to be dying a death, especially in the US, and I can't see that it's a good thing... [ Is there any way of putting paragraph breaks in the comments -- this was originally 7 paragraphs and is now rather hard to read. ]

Hmm, odd. The preview didn't show the paragraphs, but the actual comment does. Oh well...

Oh, one last thing -- it's *killing* and not just murder that's a deadly sin. An important distinction, as it means that any sort of war, execution, etc., is not just a sin, it's a Sin; considering Dubya seems to be pretty much in the Evangelical camp this is somewhat at odds with his behaviour. To quote one Mr D. Vader, I find his lack of faith disturbing.

Right, that'll do me for now!

Mat, thanks to the long comment.

(With the understanding that I am NOT encouraging a literal belief in the bible) I got curious, so I searced the web to see exactly what the bible said about homosexuality. Although Leviticus is the most explicit, you also have the story of Sodom in Genesis 19, some arguably anti-gay statements in 1 Timothy 1 and 1 Corithians 6 (whether they specifically condemn gays seems to be up to the translator), and Romans 1 is pretty straightforward (as it were).

As for loving your neighbor...should you love your neighbor if he/she is an axe murderer? "Love" in this sense does not necessarily mean "accept as-is". I would assume that the best way an Evangelical is supposed to show their love for a gay neighbor is to show them the error of their ways and try to lead them on the path to salvation. Accepting them as they are would be tantamount to becoming an "enabler" of their sinful ways.

Again, I'm not condoning this behavior -- just saying that if you believe the bible, then the rest follows (somewhat) logically.

I 100% agree that the separation of church and state is going away, and that adding gays to anti-discrimination bills should be a no-brainer for a (theoretically) secular society.

- adam

Speaking of things that grate on the nerves of some of us Christians, that casino spam above this comment really ought to go!

What I was going to comment, on, though: Mat, I think that "killing" / "murder" distinction isn't completely clear -- in the original, of course, it's in Hebrew, so it's neither of those words. And most of the "what it means in the original Hebrew" discussions I've seen seem to indicate that it's a bit closer to "murder".

And I do have a couple of other things to be disagreeable about.

1) Whether being anti-gay follows logically from the Bible is somewhat debatable. I'm Christian, I am not anti-gay, you can extrapolate from there. Or, if you prefer, extrapolate from some of the more liberal Bishops -- one of whom has published books defending his claim that anti-gayness in Christianity is based on misinterpretation.

2) The idea of a secular government -- note that it is our government that is theoretically supposed to be secular, not our society! -- is not incompatible with state-approved discrimination against gays or anyone else. It's a fairly common belief that government should support and enforce certain social norms, and there are plenty of people who are anti-gay for reasons that have nothing to do with religion, and who would very much like to have that social norm supported by their government.

So, in short: Yeah, so the anti-gay movement is currently framed largely as a "Christian vs. secular" debate. It isn't. The anti-gay movement is using Christianity as a lever to try to force this issue, but that's not where the core of the issue comes from. The core of the issue is cultural, and that culture _is_ being actively threatened -- for what I consider good reasons, but obviously they disagree.