Fundamental Questions For Fundamentalists
 

September 9 2005
Counterbias.com
Mel Seesholtz
  

The Bible is the inerrant ... word of the living God. It is absolutely infallible, without error in all matters pertaining to faith and practice…

-- Jerry Falwell

James Dobson, Lou Sheldon, Pat Robertson, Tony Perkins, Don Wildmon and, of course, Jerry Falwell call themselves and their cause “pro-family.” Same-sex parents are currently rearing eight to ten million children in the United States. Yet virtually all the efforts of these Christian leaders are designed to deny those real-world families social, cultural, legal, and economic recognition. Why? Don’t these American families count? In reality, aren’t the actions of these religious leaders in relation to same-sex parents and their children proactively “anti-family”?

James Dobson, Lou Sheldon, Pat Robertson, Tony Perkins, Don Wildmon, and Jerry Falwell say they’re dedicated to protecting the institution and the “sanctity” of marriage from those gay and lesbian Americans who wish to endorse monogamy and the institution of marriage by getting married. (The total U.S. gay/lesbian population is between 2 and 4 percent.)

As I’m sure these “men of God” are aware, on September 8, 2004 – during the height of the pre-election campaign to “save traditional marriage” – the Christian marketing-research Barna Group issued a report entitled “Born Again Christians Just As Likely to Divorce As Are Non-Christians.” It documented that “among married born again Christians, 35% have experienced a divorce. That figure is identical to the outcome among married adults who are not born again: 35%.” Barna also documented that “nearly one-quarter of the married ‘born agains’ (23%) get divorced two or more times.”

Faith-based politician Rep. John Hostettler (R-IN), one of the sponsors reintroducing a Constitutional amendment to ban same-sex nuptials, has been hinting at something one would think should be foremost in the minds of the bible-based “protect marriage” crowd. In his address to the Indiana Family Institute in Evansville, Hostettler said “The picture of marriage is the picture of Christian salvation,” and that “any diminishing of that notion – whether homosexual marriage or any other degradation of marriage – is something we must fight in public policy” (italics mine).

What about adulterers? Shouldn’t the bible-based guardians of marriage be seeking legislation to punish them for the “degradation of marriage”? Since the leaders of the Christian Right are so fond of using the Bible to damn homosexuals, shouldn’t they be reviewing scripture for the appropriate punishment for adulterers? Deuteronomy 22:22 clearly states that “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.”

No doubt more than a few of those multiple divorces among born-again Christians reported by the Barna Group involved adultery. They all grossly violated Matthew 19:6: “Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.”

Hostettler said “the picture of marriage is the picture of Christian salvation.” Since James Dobson, Lou Sheldon, Pat Robertson, Tony Perkins, Don Wildmon, and Jerry Falwell always maintain their motivation is to bring people to “Christian salvation,” why aren’t they calling for a Federal Divorce Amendment, as well as amendments to state constitutions to ban divorce and legislation to enable the execution of adulterers as demanded by Deuteronomy 22:22 and supported by Matthew 19:6?

Hence my other questions for James Dobson, Lou Sheldon, Pat Robertson, Tony Perkins, Don Wildmon, and Jerry Falwell:

If you would be so kind, gentlemen, as to explain why it is legitimate to cite the “validity” of Leviticus 18:22 in your varied political campaigns against homosexuals and marriage equality, while simultaneously ignoring other biblical edicts? What makes one “law” absolute and the others irrelevant?

 

Also, why aren’t you following the New Testament – specifically Matthew 19:6 – and lobbying for laws prohibiting divorce?

 

Furthermore, shouldn’t you be campaigning against equality for women as directed by the apostle Paul in First Timothy? He instructed Christians “suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence” because “Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived, was in the transgression.”

R.S.V.P. requested…