Not only did Newsweak have their so-called religion editor Lisa Miller write a three page feature that attempted to use the Bible as a justification for homosexual marriage, but it's the cover story.
And in case anyone has an idea that this was actually going to be an objective examination, Newsweak’s editor Jon Meacham opens the issue on this note:
No matter what one thinks about gay rights—for, against or somewhere in between —this conservative resort to biblical authority is the worst kind of fundamentalism. Given the history of the making of the Scriptures and the millennia of critical attention scholars and others have given to the stories and injunctions that come to us in the Hebrew Bible and the Christian New Testament, to argue that something is so because it is in the Bible is more than intellectually bankrupt—it is unserious, and unworthy of the great Judeo-Christian tradition.
In other words, if you rely on Scripture and what it says for any sort of guidance, not only are you some kind of ignorant, knuckle-dragging inbred hillbilly, but you're 'unworthy' of your own religion's traditions and intellectually and morally bankrupt besides.
If that's true, if it ain't so just because it's in the Bible, then why have a three page manifesto by the magazine's religion editor attempting to use the Bible to justify anything? Is Scripture only relevant when it matches Newsweak's politics? Is it okay then to use it as a basis for what's true? Does Newsweak's editor really think we're all that stupid as to not see how hypocritical that is? And notice also that the editor deliberately conflated gay rights with gay marriage,although they're two very different issues...which is pretty much a prima facie case of intellectual bankruptcy in itself.
Personally, I think there are a number of perfectly valid societal and practical arguments against same-sex marriage, but since the clowns who run Newsweak decided to actually have the unmitigated gall to try to use a religious argument to shill for it, I'll address it in those terms.
Lisa Miller personifies the Left's Orwellian tendency to make words mean what suits your political agenda at any given time.
She starts out her piece by writing that we should 'define marriage as the Bible does', and then goes on to cite Abraham, Jacob and other biblical figures in the Torah as 'polygamists' , and because they were, that somehow makes same-sex marriage just as 'justified'. Don't ask me about her logic in comparing heterosexual relationships with homosexual ones, ( by the way, she flits by any mention of the relevant verses in Leviticus and Deuteronomy that clearly describe those relationships as an abomination) but even worse, she fails to mention that the polygamous relationships she mentions were a product of that place and time, where sons worked the land and tended the flocks and were the ancient world's equivalent of Social Security. Nor does she mention that in the case of Abraham and Jacob, the wives told their husbands to procreate with their servants for that very purpose.
Miller also conveniently forgets that in the Bible, the purpose of the families she profiles start with the idea that the family is the carrier of covenant promises, the ancestors of a people and an extended family of kin and kindred that embraces generations...but always with the institution of marriage as the most basic human symbol of love and commitment. And an unabashedly heterosexual one at that, with children and procreation as a deep part of it's basic purpose.
The idea of a marriage as a covenant between one man and one woman is emphasized in another verse Newsweak's religious editor conveniently ignores, Genesis 2:24-25 :
24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. 25 And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.
Miller also cites Paul's famous statement that it was better to marry than to burn and somehow uses that as a justification that traditional Christianity didn't see hetero-sexual marriage as an ideal, but as a last resort for those who, in Miller's words, 'were unable to restrain their animal lust.'
Apparently she never read the Epistles, where Paul advises the budding Christian churches on marriage as a sacrament and a desired foundation for building the Church.And she flits by the relevant verses in Romans where Paul condemns homosexual practices just as she does Leviticus and Deuteronomy.
Even worse, Miller constantly compares legalizing gay marriage to the abolition of slavery and the civil rights struggle. Does she even remotely comprehend how offensive that comparison is to people who were actually part of a time when there were separate white and 'colored' bathrooms and water fountains, when blacks were denied the right to vote or to attend the same schools white people were, when there were restaurants that refused to serve blacks and neighborhoods that prohibited blacks from living there?
Gay Americans have never experienced anything remotely like that.
Miller finishes up by citing a number of ultra-Left Biblical scholars who agree with Miller that `religious objections to gay marriage are rooted not in the Bible at all, then, but in custom and tradition.'
Of course that's not enough for Miller..she even attempts to make the case that David was bisexual, reading the deep friendship from boyhood between Jonathan and David as a homosexual liaison!
Fascinating how a publication that became so exercised over a supposed flushed Qu'ran has no problem sliming a Biblical patriarch and a major religious figure for Jews and Christians.
Of course, that hypocrisy isn't limited just to Newsweak. It appears that Miller herself has an interesting personal stance on gay marriage.
Miller was apparently involved in a lesbian civil union up in Vermont and had a child through artificial insemination that she raised with her partner for 17 months...until Miller suddenly got religion and decided she wasn't gay anymore. At that point she relocated with the child a thousand miles away to Virginia, doing what family law practitioners refer to as a 'move away' - a euphemism for quasi-legal kidnapping during a custody battle where one parent (almost always the mother)spirits the kid away to a far away locale to deny the other party's parental rights through sheer distance and inconvenience.
It's a uniquely cruel thing to do, both to the other parent and to the child, but what's equally stunning is Lisa Miller's rationale for doing so...to protect her daughter from a "lifestyle that's fundamentally wrong."
Chew that over for a second if you will...here's someone advocating something in print for the rest of us and using the Bible to defend a practice she herself feels is 'fundamentally wrong.'
Of course, had she written a story using the Bible to show just why she feels it's wrong, Newsweak would never have published it, now would they?
Even more revealing is that the article on Miler's attempt to deny her lesbian ex parental rights is in the same issue as Miller's little sermon on the glories of gay marriage. Which gives you a good idea of exactly how smart Newsweak thinks it's readers are.
Did they really think people are too stupid to make the connection?
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