You have to admire the Mormons, at least if you appreciate, as I do, efficacy. The proposition to ban gay marriage received about 20 million dollars and an army volunteers from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, both from inside and outside California. I wonder how many, if any, of those efficient volunteers also appreciate, as I do, irony. This is the sesquicentennial of the Utah War, when another army, one with guns, marched on the Mormons to protect traditional marriage from the scourge of polygamy. A few decades later, as the US government prepared to disincorporate the LDS Church and seize their assets, their president had a “revelation” in which Jesus told him to vote no on plural marriage for his followers. He did so, leaving future generations of Mormon women to bear soccer teams of children for men as an individual effort. You would think the Mormons would want the government to stay the hell out of marriage, but apparently not.

    Setting aside Christianity for a moment, I definitely want the government to stay the hell out of contractual relationships between consenting adults, which is what marriage is as far as the state is concerned. But with the success of Proposition 8, I’ve been thinking about homosexuality and Christianity. I turn to the Bible, and, as always, the first thing I need to decide is whether or not I should kill a witch.

    “Suffer not a witch to live,” says Exodus 22:18, which is pretty much an unequivocal command. There is a lot of that kind of unequivocation in the Old Testament, or Hebrew Bible, or Tanakh. However, the New and Improved Testament with 50 percent more soul cleansing power unequivocally says it’s okay to eat ham sandwiches and keep the tip of your penis, though apparently my parents didn’t read that part. I therefore choose to concentrate my study on the New Covenant, though on the topic of homosexuality it seems pretty straightforward too. While there are several passages in different books in which the meaning of translation is argued over, Romans 1: 26 -27 does not appear to be one of them.

   Setting aside tortured arguments about “natural” homosexual relationships versus “unnatural” homosexual relationships, mistranslation, cultural norms, or other appeals to a lack of authority, it’s about context, but not that text. “Righteousness from God,” says Romans 1:17, and in a long and boring epistle provides a systematic explanation of Christianity. Those taking the above passage as gospel to defend “traditional” marriage need to read the beginning of the next chapter of Romans .

    Judge not, is the point, but not The Point, that being getting the hell off the island.

    We are all trapped on an island. How we got on the island is not really important, certainly not as important as the smoking, rumbling volcano at the island’s center. Of course, there are plenty of people who are not worried about the volcano, who will say that the volcano has always been smoking and never erupted, and that even if we had a way off the island there is no place to go. Some of us disagree, saying that a man once showed up on the island from across the ocean, and that he promised to return and take us with him. He told us to get to the beach, to be ready, to pack nothing with us save our selves, and to help others to get to the beach too.

    Of course, that was a long time ago, and though we are at the beach there is some disagreement about what he actually said. Many have brought everything they could carry with them. Some people have said they have since received messages from the man, saying what needs to be done before the ship arrives. Often, they gather others to them and move to different spots on the beach, guarding those spots rather jealously, as if the beach mattered. Even stranger, from one point of view, are people who run to the water’s edge and with some hesitation or none launch themselves into the ocean. If you catch them before they swim off, they will tell you they are going to meet the ship. You might wonder why they just don’t wait for the ship if it’s coming, but conversely if you know the ship is coming then why wait? Those who wait do so for different reasons—I can barely swim and am afraid to learn. I am convinced that waiting on the shore is not the worst thing—though it is the swimmers who will board first—but still it is not the worst thing.

    The worst thing is to keep others from the beach.