...they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, "Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.": John 8:7
Ah the bible, it's always a great post that starts with a biblical quote, but why that one?
One thing that has always struck me has been the hypocrisy of most believers in faith based religions, the cherry picking of their sacred texts, for the bits that benefit their agenda, whilst conveniently forgetting anything that doesn't support them.
Lets look at just one example, here is the main one they traipse out to condemn lgbt people, the two most quoted passages are Leviticus 18:22, 20:23 and Romans 1:26-27, which to paraphrase is basically homosexuality is a sin, and they most be put to death, yet there is so much more that they ignore:
- Gay men aren’t the only people who must pay the ultimate price for their allegedly ungodly transgressions. Leviticus 20:10 sternly asserts that if a married man commits adultery with another man’s wife, both must be immediately dispatched.
- Girls don’t escape biblical wrath, either. According to Deuteronomy 22:20-21, if a girl has the temerity to have sex before marriage, the men of her town must stone her to death at her father’s doorstep. Presumably, that could include one of the men who had caused her to lose her virginity in the first place.
- If a man kills a woman’s child, she cannot raise a peep of protest, because Timothy 2:12 forbids women from having any authority over men. If she forgets her place for a moment, she runs the risk of being branded a “sorceress,” and Exodus 22:18 commands that sorceresses not be allowed to live. And Judges 19:25-28 seems to condone tossing a woman out into the streets to be raped by a gang of men.
- The Bible doesn’t spare daughters, either. Judges 11:30-31 and 34-35 make it clear that a man may sacrifice his daughter to thank God for giving him a triumph. And it is not just daughters who can be slain in sacrifice. In Genesis 22:2 God commands Abraham to take his son Isaac to a mountaintop and sacrifice him as a burnt offering. And the child can’t protest his or her fate, because Leviticus 20:9 insists that talking back to a parent warrants the death penalty.
- The two groups that fare the best in the Bible are husbands and slave masters. Ephesians 5:22 says that the word of a man is law in his household and that his wife must obey him unquestioningly in whatever he says and does. And 1 Peter 2:13 and 18 asserts that slaves must serve their masters not only faithfully but in “reverence.” And this rule doesn’t apply just to slaves of “kind and charitable” slave masters but to slaves of lousy and brutal ones. But at least there’s a caveat: Leviticus 25:44-45 only permits the enslavement of foreigners.
So why am I getting my knickers in a knot over this shit, could I not just ignore them? Put it all down to Freeze Peach and walk away, sure, but then I'd be complicate in the deaths of members of my community, and I want us to live, live fruitful, meaningful lives, without being persecuted.
I want to be free to live my life with being hassled by bigots intent on removing me from existence, without having to come across jokes (term used loosely) that punch down, whose only worth as humor is to cement the dominant paradigm, and reinforce the message that its OK to hate these people, to scorn them, to laugh at them.
So I say to all these people of faith, pick up that stone...please pick it up and throw it at my human body, the same body you inhabit, the same human body that those you love have.
So kill me, show me the conviction of your faith, remove me from existence, throw that stone, but you better be damn sure that your own soul is pure, because no one smites, like a angry god.
You therefore have no excuse, you who pass judgment on another. For on whatever grounds you judge the other, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things.
Namaste