Religion, Politics, and Death by Stoning
 

July 15 2005
Counterbias.com
Mel Seesholtz

 

“We are all proud that through God’s powerful aid, we have become once again true [patriots].”

Substitute “Allah” for “God,” and one can easily imagine that statement coming out of the mouth of Osama bin Laden or any of the other fundamentalist Islamic political terrorists.

Leave “God” in, and the statement would naturally flow from the lips of George W. Bush or Tom DeLay, Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell. They all believe they are on a messianic mission from God to “save” Christian America, and anyone who is not with them, is against them… and “God.”

Naturally, therefore, such leaders believe it is their “holy duty” to stamp out their – and “God’s” – religious and political opponents in any way necessary. For the sanctimonious leaders of the Christian Right, that includes any “people of faith” who don’t blindly obey them and march to their orders.

Jerry Falwell just launched one of his patented (poison-tipped) holy missiles at one such Christian group. They dared to suggest that Falwell, James Dobson, Pat Robertson – and I would have to add Rev. Lou Sheldon, who is currently pleading with the flock to buy his latest homophobic rant – are more interested in their own power and theocratic agendas than anything even remotely related to spirituality.

What did the Christian Alliance for Progress say that drew Jerry’s invective? He answered that in a Falwell Confidential, the “insider weekly newsletter to The Moral Majority Coalition and The Liberty Alliance,” which wasn’t so confidential that it couldn’t also be posted on World Net Daily:

In announcing its formation, the Christian Alliance for Progress unveiled what it called its “Jacksonville Declaration,” an open letter to the political and church leaders of the religious right, which “challenges and invites them to return to a Christian foundation of compassion and justice, values that Jesus passionately taught and lived.”

How dare “Christians” call for compassion and justice! Poor Rev. Falwell must have been in a tizzy, especially since genuine “people of faith” in Virginia and across the nation are also calling for Christian compassion and civil justice, just as the gospels call upon them to do.

On July 10, 2005 the Associated Press reported on one multi-denominational group in Falwell’s home state: “a growing group of clergy, community leaders and strongly spiritual residents [formed] People of Faith for Equality in Virginia. Organizers aim to be the antithesis of the vocal conservative Christian set, offering a faith-based, yet gay-friendly perspective they say is absent in Virginia’s gay rights discussions.”

Virginia’s Metropolitan Community Churches also enthusiastically endorsed the “Stand Up For Equality” campaign. Their web site features the logos of many other supporting Virginia organizations, both secular and spiritual.

And then there’s Letha Dawson Scanzoni, an evangelical Christian whose new book exposes realities for what they are:

Letha Dawson Scanzoni hardly stands alone among fellow evangelical Christians in lamenting the high rate of divorce, young adults who “hook up” for casual sex and unwed parents. In her just-released book, “What God Has Joined Together?, ” the Norfolk writer says that America must reverse decades of marital decline.

 

But those same pro-marriage evangelicals may recoil from her book’s subtitle: “A Christian Case for Gay Marriage.” In it, Scanzoni argues that neither the Bible nor “family values” are incompatible with homosexuality.

Never fear. The hate-filled Falwellian Christians in Virginia are also active. St. John’s Reformed United Church of Christ in Middlebrook, Virginia was desecrated or, as the Associated Press put it, “UCC Church Covered In Gay Hate Messages and Torched.” The United Church of Christ’s General Synod recently endorsed same-sex marriage. Nothing like violence, bigotry and hate to combat compassion, justice and love.

But nothing Falwellian “Christians” have concocted (yet) outdoes what foreign religious fundamentalists with political power have wrought. (Although Lou Sheldon’s proposal to put gays and other “undesirables” in concentration camps came close.)

Uganda and several other “religious” African nations – Algeria, Kenya, Zambia and Namibia to name but a few – have taken Draconian steps against their gay and lesbian citizens. Even though homosexuality was already illegal in Uganda – and punishable by a tortured life in prison – the country once led by Idi Amin has now made it illegal for same-sex Uganda nationals to marry… anywhere. Extradition treaties could bring the newlywed victims “home” for a truly Ugandan reception. For those who don’t remember Idi Amin Dada…

After his coup of his predecessor, Apollo Milton Obote, Amin rounded up the military leaders that did not support his coup, murdered them, decapitated them and sat their disembodied heads around the presidential dining table, scolding them for not supporting him, and taking bites of their flesh.

The exact penalties for Uganda’s gay nationals who profess love for and commitment to each other and reaffirm the bedrock institution of civilization by getting married are to be spelled out when the country’s Penal Code is revised. No doubt those penalties will “do justice” to the legacy of Idi Amin, as Adrian Blomfield’s report suggests:

“Regime of tyranny and torture back to haunt Uganda.” Suspected dissidents disappear after midnight visits to their homes; chilling screams can again be heard from Idi Amin’s infamous torture chambers, reopened after a quarter of a century of disuse. From the few that escape come tales of punishment beatings and even mass executions.

Falwell, Robertson, Dobson, Sheldon, and the rest of the leaders of America’s Taliban were probably in rapture over a decision by a Nigerian court and its “activist judge.” The 365Gay.com headline said it all: “Court Sentences Gay Man To Death By Stoning”:

A 50 year old man has been sentenced by a Nigerian court to death by stoning after he admitted in court he has had sex with men. The man, whose name has not been made public, had been charged with sodomy and brought before a Sharia or Islamic court in northern Nigeria. Following a brief trial he was acquitted. But, according to a UN report, the judge then asked the man if he had ever had sex with another man. When the man answered yes the judge convicted him of sodomy and sentenced him to death.

Death by stoning is the prescribed Islamic punishment for homosexuality in Nigeria’s northern theocracies. Stoning is also the punishment prescribed in the Bible for a whole lot of people. Leviticus 24:10 clearly states, “Bring forth him that hath cursed without the camp; and let all that heard him lay their hands upon his head, and let all the congregation stone him.” Leviticus 24:11-16 call for a community gathering in order to stone to death those who plant two different crops in the same field or wear garments made of two different kinds of threads. Leviticus 20:10 states that “if a man commits adultery with the wife of another man both the adulterer and the adulteress shall be put to death.”

Deuteronomy is loaded with stoning edicts. Chapter 22 verse 21 states that unless the parents of a bride can provide proof of her virginity, “then they shall bring the young woman out to the entrance of her father’s house and the men of her town shall stone her to death.” Deuteronomy 22:22 reinforces Leviticus: “If a man is caught lying with the wife of another man, both of them shall die, the man who lay with the woman as well as the woman.” Deuteronomy 22:23-24 states “If there is a young woman, a virgin already engaged to be married, and a man meets her in the town and lies with her, you shall bring both of them to the gate of that town and stone them to death.”

And, of course, there’s Exodus 35:2 regarding the Sabbath: “whoever does any work on it shall be put to death.” Presumably that includes those like Falwell, Robertson, Dobson and Sheldon who work the Sabbath for their own power and profit.

If the leaders of the Christian Right are going to quote Leviticus 18:22 and other biblical verses and insist they are “God’s word” and, therefore, must be enforced morally, politically and legally against gay people, then shouldn’t they also be having revival meetings for the sole purpose of stoning the vast majority of their own flocks. Those left over after the mass stonings would then be available to stone their lying, Sabbath-breaking, blasphemous false-prophet leaders.

In the final analysis it is as Charles Hammer noted in his article “Literal interpretation: A quick study of the Bible reveals the hypocrisy of conservative Christians, who claim to follow the good book word for word”:

Conservatives do not explain why – defying Biblical commands – they refuse to stone wizards, homosexuals, and nonvirgin brides. Instead, they justify today’s more humane ethics by speaking of the “Old Covenant” and the “New Covenant,” … as if the enduring, eternal God had reinvented himself and his laws between the Old Testament and the New. … With conservatives it also comes down to the same picking and choosing among scriptures … They choose to absolve Sabbath-breakers, blasphemers, remarried “adulterers,” and nonvirgin brides – but not homosexuals, who are condemned if not to death at least to damnation.

“Leaders” who claim to speak for or be instructed by “God” and then convince others to change civil laws so they can be used against “them” are always dangerous. Changing existing laws so he could better use them against his, “God’s” and the state’s “enemies” was one of the tactics of the man who authored the quote that began this article. He was born at 6:30 PM on April 20, 1889 in the small Austrian village of Braunau just across the border from Bavaria. He was the fourth child of Alois Schickelgruber and Klara Hitler, and he had another saying that well suits Falwell, Dobson, Robertson, Sheldon, as well as George W. Bush and Tom Delay:

"How fortunate for leaders that men do not think." -- Adolph Hitler

 

But there are other, “new covenant” words that also need to be repeated, specifically those of Dr. Kobus Gerber soon after he became the leader of South Africa’s Dutch Reformed Church. The Church’s General Synod had issued a formal apology to the nation’s gay and lesbian community for years of religiously fueled homophobia. Dr. Gerber was direct: “We would like to ask for forgiveness for the pain and suffering that we caused you and your families in the past. We accept that what we did in the past was wrong.”