Who Are Today's True 'Sodomites'?
 

April 18 2006
Counterbias.com
MEL SEESHOLTZ
 

America’s two most flaming homophobes – Rev. Lou Sheldon and Rev. Fred Phelps – now have something else in common: the language they use to describe those they fear and loathe.

At the recent conference on the “War on Christians” Lou Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition urged the participants to stop using the terms “homosexual” and “gay.” Sheldon recommended such [terms] as “sodomites” and “the perverted ones.” [link added]

But in his article “Gays are not the real Sodomites according to the Bible,” Richard Mahtis also explained why “sodomite” does not actually pertain to gays and how “the perverted ones” clearly appertains to Sheldon, Phelps, and other like-minded folks.

After summarizing the allegory of Sodom and Gomorrah as passed on in Genesis 19, Mahtis pointed out the first of many anomalies:

The way many conservative Christians interpret this [story] is that God destroyed Sodom because the residents wanted to rape two foreign men. Amazing, that all the residents of the town, the Bible says, showed up to rape the two angels. That means the women and children had to be there. [italics added]

Genesis 19:4 says, “But before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, both young and old, all the people to the last man, surrounded the house” [italics added]. Even if women and children were not included in the patriarchal expression “all the people,” is it realistic to believe that all the men of Sodom were homosexuals?

Genesis 19:5 says that all the people of Sodom demanded, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, so that we may know them” [italics added]. As Mahtis pointed out,

The Hebrew word used was “ya,da.” This verb means “know” with an ambiguous meaning. The verb ya’da appears over 900 times elsewhere in the Old Testament, normally used in the sense of knowing a fact. There are a dozen or so uses when it means sex and then it is always obvious such as a man knowing a woman and her getting pregnant. The sexual references are always heterosexual. …

Do angels have a gender? Do they have genitalia? Do they dance on the head of a pin?

Mahtis also pointed out yet another incongruity:

As to the crowd being a bunch of randy gays wanting to rape two male angels, certainly Lot, as a citizen of Sodom, would have known his neighbors sexual preferences. If they were wanting male booty he wouldn’t have added insult to injury by offering the rioting gays a couple of girl virgins.

Those “girl virgins” were, of course, Lot’s own daughters. In Genesis 19:8 Lots says, “Look, I have two daughters who have not known a man; let me bring them out to you, and do to them as you please.”

Given the puritanical beliefs of conservative and fundamentalist Christians, one has to wonder why they don’t condemn Lot for offering his virginal daughters, especially in light of the “purity laws” expounded in Leviticus and Deuteronomy. Or why “God” would save a man who offered his own young daughters as sacrifices. But then again, that same Old Testament “God” did command Abraham to sacrifice his own son, to “Him.” (But settled for the foreskin of Isaac’s penis. A rather kinky “sexual” trade-off, don’t you think?)

Ah, but that was the Old Testament “God.” Christians look to Jesus as the messenger of “God’s” new wishes. That new message was conveyed in Matthew 10:9-15. But as Mahtis pointed out, Jesus’

reference to Sodom is that it was a city that was inhospitable to strangers and the poor. In the Jewish tradition – and I do believe the rabbis know more than a thing or two about Hebrew scriptures – the phrase “middat Sdom” has been long used. It translates as acting or thinking like the Sodomites and means lacking charity and hospitality. It means ignoring the needs of the poor, sick, and the widows and orphans. Throughout the Bible, it always has been a moral obligation and duty to help those in need. Indeed, every prophet warned of the indulgences of the leaders and/or people while they ignored the real needs of the poor and downtrodden. …

 

[The prophet] Ezekiel said the sins of the Sodomites were that they were “arrogant, overfed and unconcerned.” Ezekiel might as well been talking about a lot of Americans. What else did he say? “They did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things...” [italics and link added]

Following the attacks of September 11, 2001, Rev. Louis P. Sheldon argued against giving aid to the surviving members of gay and lesbian partnerships, many of whom had children. Is that what a “moral” man would think and say after such a horrible tragedy? Or are those the thoughts and words of a good Sodomite?

Many of Rev. Sheldon’s other comments confirm his “middat Sdom” nature. For example:

 Americans should understand that their attitudes about homosexuality have been deliberately and deceitfully changed by a masterful propaganda/marketing campaign that rivals that of Adolph Hitler. In fact, many of the strategies used by homosexuals to bring about cultural change in America are taken from Hitler’s writings and propaganda welfare manuals.”

Since Rev. Sheldon likes to use the Hitler analogy, let’s pursue it. Sheldon believes homosexuals are the bane of civilization and will destroy society. Hitler thought the same about homosexuals and Jews, and he acted on those beliefs in much the same way Sheldon suggested homosexuals and HIV+ people – that include millions of children – should be dealt with. He urged they be rounded up and put into “cities of refuge” (aka “concentration camps”).

Hitler claimed that he and his vision for the new German state were “persecuted” and endangered by Jews and homosexuals. How appropriate the most absurd assertion at “The War on Christians” conference came from Sodomite Fuehrer Sheldon when he claimed that the radical Christian Right – that plays victim while victimizing everyone who disagrees with it – has “fared poorly” because "Christians are nice guys, and nice guys finish last.” That “nice guys” assertion is right up there with “Arbeit Macht Frei.”

But no one exemplifies “middat Sdom” or does as Sheldon suggested and uses the term “sodomites” in relation to gays more frequently than Rev. Fred Phelps of Westboro Baptist Church:

The man responsible for the “GodHatesFags.com” and “GodHatesAmerica.com” websites picketed the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., Thursday with a dozen of his family members and followers. They carried signs stating “Thank God for Maimed Soldiers,” “Thank God for Dead Soldiers” and “God Hates You.” [links added]

As Jeff Johnson’s article for Cybercast News Service also reported,

“God almighty is punishing this evil nation by killing their kids over in Iraq and by maiming, crippling and mangling their kids over in Iraq,” Phelps told Cybercast News Service. “This nation is going to continue to be punished by God until they repent, but we don’t believe they’re going to repent.” See video.

 

Phelps believes military personnel share the blame for court decisions and legislation favoring homosexuality, even if those service members do not support that lifestyle.

 

“It’s irrelevant whether they as individuals support them. They joined an army and became a part of a military establishment, voluntarily, knowing that that military establishment was packed and jammed with homosexuals,” Phelps argued. “If they join an army that they know is a sodomite army and fight for a nation that they know is a sodomite nation, they are equally guilty.”

Phelps and his group not only protested at the funeral of Matthew Shepard, the twenty-one year-old Wyoming man viciously beaten to death because he was gay, they also have a history of protesting at the funerals of American soldiers killed in Iraq.

Other than Sheldon’s political lobbying to advance his agenda of bigotry and hate, and the bizarre, disgusting protests by Phelps, neither of them have been actively or directly involved – as in their hands being soiled from digging in the dirt and working with those devastated by recent natural disasters – in helping “the poor, sick, and the widows and orphans.” Sheldon and his Traditional Values Coalition just don’t see – much less care about – the poor, sick, or widows if they’re gay. Phelps and Westboro Baptist Church see them, and then gleefully damn them in the most vile terms they can “think” of. And, of course, both Sheldon’s TVC and Phelps’ WBC are vehemently opposed to same-sex couples adopting orphaned or otherwise homeless children.

Dressed in his finely tailored suits, Sheldon sits comfortably in his “corporate headquarters” belching bloated bigotry. With his Brokeback Mountain cowboy hat and traveling bigotry brigade, Phelps is even more “out there,” literally and metaphorically. But both men do exceeding well fit Ezekiel’s definition of Sodomites. They are “arrogant,” “unconcerned,” “haughty,” and they do and say “detestable things.”

George W. Bush also fits those descriptions. He claims his bogus war was meant to “free” people and to ensure the equality and civil rights of all Iraqi citizens. So why isn’t the born-again Christian crusading cowboy from Texas saying or doing something about this:

A gay man identified only as Ammar was abducted and shot in the back of the head in January 2006.

 

Following a death-to-gays fatwa issued last October by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani death squads of the Badr Corps have been systematically targeting gay Iraqis for persecution and execution, gay Iraqis say. But when they ask for help and protection from U.S. occupying authorities in the “Green Zone,” gay Iraqis are met with indifference and derision. [italics added]

Could it be that like sanctimonious Sheldon and wing-nut Phelps, GWB and his administration really don’t give a damn about gay people, whatever their status, situation, or nationality? That marked-for-death gay Iraqis were met with “indifference and derision” by U.S. “occupying authorities” should come as no surprise. Those “authorities” now admit targeting gays and lesbians in America as well:

The Department of Defense released documents confirming that the U.S. government conducted surveillance on gay groups, the military advocacy group Servicemembers Legal Defense Network announced Tuesday [April 11, 2006].

 

The surveillance documents, called TALON reports, were released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by SLDN in January and revealed that the Pentagon carried out surveillance of gay and lesbian groups that conducted protests at New York University, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of California, Santa Cruz. The campus protests denounced the Pentagon's “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, which bars gay, lesbian, and bisexual military personnel from serving openly. …

 

“That [inappropriate] information should be destroyed, and no similar surveillance should be authorized in the future,” [C. Dixon] Osburn [executive director of SLDN] said. “Free expression is not a threat to our national security.”

But for Bush and his administration, such “free expression” is deemed a threat to theocratic security and, as their foreign and domestic agendas have so clearly shown, they deal aggressively with such “threats.”

Bush has personally encouraged discrimination – and the violence it inevitably spawns – against gay and lesbian Americans and their civil right to be.

As John D. Moore, author of Confusing Love With Obsession: When You Can’t Stop Controlling Your Partner and the Relationship and professor of health sciences and psychology at American Public University, noted in a March 8, 2004 Advocate.com article,

When President George W. Bush decided to publicly embrace a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, cloaking his remarks in the guise of religion, he psychologically violated millions upon millions of gay and lesbian youth around the nation as well as the many millions more who are their parents and relatives. In short, Mr. Bush has made it fashionable to declare “open season” on a segment of our society. Make no mistake – his intolerant message was quite clear: “You and your family are not part of the American [or global] family.” …

 

Consider what one 20-year-old student wrote in an essay about this topic in a class I instruct on gender psychology: “I have beaten up faggots before, and I used to feel guilty – not anymore! Bush says fags don’t count, so I guess it’s cool to do it.” … [links and italics added]

As Ezekiel said of Sodomites, they are “arrogant,” “unconcerned,” and “haughty.” They do and say “detestable things” and encourage others to do the same, just as Sheldon, Phelps and George W. Bush do.

“Christians Sue for Right Not to Tolerate Policies.” It seems Sodomites are pressing their detestable, haughty agenda of arrogance and unconcern by trying to legalize intolerance and discrimination:

[There is] a growing campaign to force public schools, state colleges and private workplaces to eliminate policies protecting gays and lesbians from harassment. The religious right aims to overturn a broad range of common tolerance programs: diversity training that promotes acceptance of gays and lesbians, speech codes that ban harsh words against homosexuality, anti-discrimination policies that require college clubs to open their membership to all.

 

The Rev. Rick Scarborough, a leading evangelical, frames the movement as the civil rights struggle of the 21st century. “Christians,” he said, “are going to have to take a stand for the right to be Christian.

Not surprisingly, Rick Scarborough, founder and former president of Vision America, was a convener at the organization’s recent “War on Christians” conference. He also fits Ezekiel’s definition of a Sodomite very well.

Scarborough, Sheldon, Phelps, and Bush are today’s true Sodomites. Their words and deeds confirm their identity.

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