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(Google Ads is really selling you guys well - on the mobile verison of this post the top ad is for Christian web television promising "traditional family values" a la Bible dramas, and the lower ad urges me to "Date Sexy Chinese Women". Ad tailoring at its finest. It's fun make you guys a few pennies by clicking to see these sites we never would otherwise.)
Matthew 5.32:
"But I say to you that anyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, causes her to commit adultery; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery."
Leviticus 20.10:
"If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall be put to death."
As Goldy would say, discus.
The kid shouldn't be in too much trouble. The editor who approved it and the teacher who signed off on it being published should be though. That article doesn't meet any standards of journalism... well, I suppose he didn't misspell too many words, but it isn't quality journalism. If it was an assignment (like the crazy conservative lawyer says it was) then it should have received a very poor grade, for being extremely poor writing.
Should the kid be in trouble for bullying? I don't think so. Should his article ever have been published? Lord no, and someone in authority should be getting re-trained on how to decide what can go to print and what needs to be edited out.
Edited, not censored. You can make a well-reasoned argument against gay adoption using logic and "facts" from "studies." Your argument will be flawed because those facts and studies are flawed, but it could be well reasoned and well written, and could be published. It would still be offensive, and would deserve a harsh rebuttal using real facts and science, but it would be no different than any of the major news publications that have printed similar articles.
Better luck next time, bigots.
The decision does not apply to public colleges, nor to private schools. But in this case, the school could have censored the paper if they decided the editorial was against their pedogical interests..... though I'm not sure if that argument would work.
Don't get your panties in a knot over it
I think he unintentionally implied that homosexuals be ought to be put to death. He's an idiot. That's why newspapers have editors. And that is where the responsibility lies. Someone smarter than him surely saw the implications and let his letter go to press anyway.
If one wants to engage in the futile task of locating where Jesus condemns homosexuality in the Bible, shouldn't they look somewhere other than the book of Leviticus? That book couldn't have been written less than 1200 years before Jesus even showed up.
the evidence for your statement is a close to ten year old poll that was conducted right around the Lawrence V Texas decision?? jeez man, how do we know the numbers haven't gone UP since then?
I'm with @8, 12, & 15 - the editors were at fault here.
Do you suppose someone could get away with wishing all Republicans were Dead, on national TV?
In The Qunited States of Gommorica only Faggots get to opine on what the Bible says.....
(Now that's the kind of precendent you cite on SLOG!)
Jaysus! I was a high school paper editor, if this crap came across my desk ( even at the composition level) I would have been like "HA! good one! Now go do some actual research and write a real article."
The real problem here is what's in the Bible/Koran/etc., more than one particular dumb kid quoting it.
This is all part of what I call the "Myth of Moderation;" the idea that people who invoke religious justification for bashing gay folks are either lying or unhinged, Phelps-style bozos.
That's precisely wrong. They're NOT lying, heretics or extremist freakazoids.
The brute, cold fact is that the so-called Great Religions of the Western World, the Abrahamic monotheisms, have openly and unambiguously demonized and authorized violence against gay people for centuries, going right back to the formalization of their respective dogmas.
If you're a Christian, Muslim or Jew and you're fine with people being gay... terrific! Good to know. But let's get one thing clear: YOU are the deviant, the 'extremist', the apostate in terms of what your religion has clearly, explicitly taught its faithful throughout the centuries.
But don't look for too many people to confront that. Let's all just furrow our brows about "bullying" instead.
Could this have something to do with the discrimination that some--not all, but some--religious groups direct against everyone else?
Also, to be fair to Judaism and Christianity, THE BIBLE (Old Testament/Torah) also calls for murdering all infidels; it's not just the Koran.
It's perfectly legit to point out that lots of people arrive at political positions based on religious views and that in a democracy, that point of view should be heard. His inadequate grasp of civics (bear in mind, he's just starting high school and he's probably had "America is a Christian nation" drilled into his head for years) notwithstanding, there is a valid point that's just not being expressed very well.
1. The school's journalism teacher, newspaper's editor-in-chief, or whoever else assigned this topic for a"duke-it-out' editorials feature. This is where the bigotry and bullying takes place, and these are the people responsible for it, by requiring an assignment virtually guaranteed to result in bullying or at the least deeply offending some of the school's population.
2. The editor who allowed such a poorly-written piece to go to press.
3. The writer, who relied on the bible as valid source in an argument. When I teach argument, I emphasize the need to choose authorities that your opposition recognizes and respects. If you rest your whole argument's weight on the authority of the Bible and your opponent doesn't recognize that authority, your whole argument, unsupported, crumbles and falls apart. There are other arguments to be made against gay people adopting, which can actually be argued, and not only should the writer have used them, the editor should have refused this editorial on those grounds alone, even if he or she personally agrees with the Bible as a source for constructing a valid argument.
As a side note, I don't know that the writer's heart was really in it. It has such an unconvincing tone, and is padded as if to make up for in length what it lacks in sense. This was an assignment, so it's hard to know how heartfelt this student's beliefs expressed here really are.
But, fundies are still a minority, just as the folks who gleefully dissect and reinterpret Talmud for days on end are. The various holy books make more sense as raw material for wonderfully intellectual and argumentative discussions of spiritual matters, not as fucking recipes for life. There are denominations that recognize this and there are denominations that don't.
To put it in modern IT terms, the real problem is not the data store (Bible, Koran, etc.), it's in either the back end (Church hierarchies) or the user interface (idiots).
(Not the kind of spelling to use on SLOG.)
Because, eww, BUTTSECKS. Or something.
Point - Counterpoint article
The fundamentalist's literalistic interpretation of scripture in Christianity is a recent phenomena. Check out the famous Scopes trial in 1925. It isn't even 100 years old.
And for your consideration. A little selection from Mark Driscoll's new book on marriage.
"Some couples use [anal sex] to prevent pregnancy. In conjunction with the rhythm method of birth control in which normal penis-vagina intercourse is suspended on a woman’s days of fertility, it is possible to use anal sex as an option. (186)"
So much for anal sex taboo amongst the literalist Christians. Driscoll might have gotten his divine direction from the Song of Songs, there is lots of erotic imagery to find there.
That's only because a substantial portion of the American public wants to see hot, sweaty man on man action in a jail setting.
Now the same paper owes its community a counterpoint article on how that author is a dumb ass.
I love all these Christians who don't even know most of the book they follow with such devotion. Goddammit people, read it before you quote it.
http://news.yahoo.com/low-iq-conservativ…
Not a shock but the timing is interesting.
Now, the jist of the paper doesn't seem to be about killing gays as much as preventing adoption, marriage and similar rights (plus keeping homosexuality as a sin). I imagine a paper saying that not keeping your virginity till marriage is wrong, bad, and is the source of all social problems could still be published in many a school paper. As could a paper about how the Christian faith is under attack by believers of other faiths, and that we should do something against the infidels who are harming us.
If the climate were favorable, fundies might even go as far as actually openly defending the killing of their enemies. But it's not what this article does yet, as far as I can tell.
It's still a hotly debated issue. Articles similar to this one againt interratial marriage probably could get published 50 years ago. As Dan once pointed out, we haven't reached the stage at which disagreeing with gay rights becomes creepy, as it is with disagreeing with equal rights for ethnic minorities. If the current trend continues this will eventually happen; we're just not there yet.
That is the probably vain hope I am clinging to.
I am not really sure what the point is except that even people like this kid can turn around. Just like the parents of gay kids do. They just need the right influence. Maybe we should focus on being that influence instead of being adversarial and "fanning the flames".
Here's a followup, from the same website, from this afternoon. Deals with the kid & dads who first brought it to the district's attention. Shocking quote in a message purported to be from a teacher:
http://tinyurl.com/7tobmv8
The kid also cites Jesus' (non-existent) opinion on homosexuality as a reason to stop gay adoption. Maybe he thinks that the whole Bible, including the parts that happened before Jesus was even born, is being narrated by Jesus?
Anyway, I really think where the blame should be placed on the teacher who approved this. Teens, especially brainwashed right-wing religious ones, will say and do stupid things. Frankly, the fact that this issue is something on which a teacher thinks there could be a good "point" and "counterpoint" is sad enough. There is no argument or justification for homophobia. But that's how it is in this country.
I'm surprised the post at Towleroad didn't call the stupid kid on saying "Jesus says" for a quote from Leviticus. He doesn't even know his own religion! Or they didn't point out the ridiculousness of letting the Liberty Counsel label itself as "specializing in first amendment rights" when it's usually the opposite - they defend Christofascists whenever they want to infringe on others' First Amendment rights.