God works in mysterious ways.
Or so I was told throughout my childhood, when going to church was a ritual my family completed several times every week. But even having spent years logging countless hours sitting on those hard, uncomfortable pews listening to interminable sermons about the holy men who wrote The Bible thousands of years ago, I find it difficult to believe they could have foreseen days like this, a post-Stonewall world where LGBTQ people have fought for and won many of the same rights as everyone else.
Did God, as some holy rollers would like us to believe, actually think it necessary to condemn homosexuality because it was such a threat in the B.C. era? Did he go and tell it to Moses on the mountain, or plant the seed in Jesus’s ear. It’s not like there were same-sex couples and gay-rights activists showing out on the streets of Nazareth.
But then, I’ve never read The Bible in its entirety. And I suspect neither have most of the people who insist on using it to support their homophobia. When folks have an agenda, though, pretty much any sentence can be spun to further their cause.
How about we take this to the next level?
Our newsletter is like a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.
Which brings us to Seyi Omooba, an actress who was fired from a UK stage production of The Color Purple after she refused to apologize for a homophobic Facebook post she wrote in 2014. Now, like the owner of a Colorado bakery who took his refusal to make a cake for a gay wedding all the way to the Supreme Court, Omooba is claiming religious discrimination.
First, let’s consider the post that cost Omooba her gig. In it, she wrote, “Some Christians have completely misconceived the issue of Homosexuality, they have begun to twist the word of God. It is clearly evident in 1 Corinthians 6:9–11 what the bible says on this matter. I do not believe you can be born gay, and I do not believe homosexuality is right, though the law of this land has made it legal doesn’t mean that it’s right.”
For those unfamiliar with the specifics of 1 Corinthians 6:9, as I was before I looked it up, here is what it has to say: “Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men.” As 1 Corinthians is attributed to Paul the Apostle, that wasn’t actually a direct decree from God. They were the alleged words of a man who claimed to be His representative.
Corinthians, by the way, is the same book of the New Testament that forbids women from speaking in church: “If there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home.” Had Paul been sage enough to foresee the rise of social media, I wonder what he would have had to say about female actors who write about the Word of God on Facebook.
The problem with using the Bible to support homophobia is that the source material — at least the King James version — isn’t 100 percent dependable. Many of the points in the original text, which was written in various ancient languages, including Hebrew and Latin, were likely lost in translation. And in any form, the good book is riddled with inconsistencies, contradictions, and impossibilities, beginning with one heterosexual couple, Adam and Eve, populating the entire planet.
Should we revert to the supposed mores of a time in which a vengeful, wrathful, and jealous God practically wiped out the human race by making it rain for 40 days and 40 nights and turned people into pillars of salt for daring to look back at a city He had destroyed. I’m not willing to change the way I love in order to comply with what Paul, a mere mortal who lived thousands of years ago, claimed was the will of that version of God.
Of course, if you gotta have faith, that’s your prerogative. People are free to believe what they want to believe, and they’re free to write about it on Facebook. I don’t think their misguided points of view should cost them their livelihoods. That said, Omooba wasn’t just fired from a random job. It was a part in a musical adaptation of a novel written by an LGBTQ author. If she is as dedicated to her religious convictions as she claims to be, why did she not have a problem earning a living through the work of Alice Walker, a woman whom she would just as soon condemn to hell for living a sinful life?
It wasn’t a random job, nor was it a random part. Omooba was dismissed from the lead role of Celie, who is involved in a same-sex relationship during the course of The Color Purple’s story. (It’s the part that earned Whoopi Goldberg a Best Actress Oscar nomination in 1986.) If she’s going to claim religious discrimination after being sacked, where was her dedication to her religion when she accepted the job? Can she use her religious convictions to back her up now when they didn’t seem to matter when she was pursuing the job?
Having grown up in a strict, religious environment (affiliation: the Pentecostal Christian denomination Church of God), I’ve been dealing with people like Omooba all of my life. Sometimes they’ve been folks in my own clan (thankfully, none in my immediate family). They claim to be guided by love, but all I’ve seen in their eyes when they see me is hate. If looks could kill, I’d be a pillar of salt, just like the doomed wife of Lot. What would the God that Paul the Apostle claimed to have such a strong connection to think of that?
Omooba, if you’re reading this (and she wouldn’t be the first homophobe to spend way too much time on an LGBTQ website), don’t answer that. She probably thinks He’d be cheering them on.
For all her protestations of religious discrimination, at least she gets to live. Thanks, in part, to people who think just like her and a number of holy rollers I’ve had to quietly dismiss from my life, many in the LGBTQ community aren’t so fortunate.
Vince
Very good article Jeremy. I’m glad they exposed that Oomba bitch. Just like that Filipino soccer player when you expose them to the light of day they’re easily shown as full of shit. It only works on their fellow cultists.
aaronarnwine
Cute
djm
A lot of people ignore Paul completely and go back to Leviticus. It also says having sex with women during their period is wrong.
Interestingly, it does not say to kill people for these things. What is says to do is cut them off from their people. Very different.
Corinthians is covered well enough so no need for further comment. In any case, Jesus didn’t comment on it, nor did those who wrote the Gospels. You’d think something so important would be front page news.
Paco
Their numbers are shrinking every year because their hypocrisy, selfishness and hateful rhetoric is becoming increasingly difficult to condone.
That is also why they are desperate to trash the Constitution and turn the government into a theocracy so they can force their beliefs on everyone.
PLAYS WELL WITH OTHERS
FCUK YOU QUEERTY AND YOUR BULLTHIT NEW CAPTCHA
Paco
It’s annoying. I make sure to copy my comment before submitting so I can keep trying to post it until it goes through.
Vince
At least it got rid of the spammers. They probably got tired of the constant failed comment tries. Of coarse not great for the regular commenters as well..
dhmonarch89
but it is a weapon- has been for about, what- 5000 years?
gaygeezer
Not 5000 years. You’re thinking of the old testament, which is a history of a people whom various subsequent self-styled christians reviled and persecuted as ‘christ killers’ all across Europe for 2000 years, and still do. The old testament is included in the bible in order to legitimize its doctrine. The new testament is a fifth-century AD political document intended to shore up the crumbling Roman empire. Its purpose was (and still is) to stifle individual thought and freedom of speech under the guise of attainable spiritual salvation. It has justified just as many hate crimes and killings as has any other political manifesto, whose purpose is to achieve unanimity by killing those who dissent or differ.
Mack
The Bible was written by Man and not by God, get that straight. It was written by men the same as the ones we’re faced with today. just another Graham, Robertson, Osteen, Roberts and so forth in a different time. They promoted their own brand of bigotry and racism. It’s all a con-game to keep the followers in line.
PLAYS WELL WITH OTHERS
I’ll try again!
These vile aberrant pukes always cherry-pick obscure passages to “justify” their hatred and bigotry of gays
However they conveniently seem to ignore these little nuggets. In that very same Bible!
if your teenage child talks back to you you are to take them into a public square and kill them
If you discover your wife is not a virgin on your wedding night you are to kill her
And if dear old Mom adorns herself with “gold and baubles” she too must be killed
And then there is this one which I wish should be greatly publicized for those vile smcubags who toss their own children out to the street for being Gay.
1 Timothy 5:8
“But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.
they have no idea that because of the miserable horrible hate-filled ways they have lived their lives they are destined to spend eternity in the darkest corner of Hell…
Cam
The idiocy of all of this is that the people who claim they are just good Christians following the Bible are all breaking multiple Christian rules.
Remember, Kim Davis? Who said that her religion gave her the right to discriminate against LGBT people? Interesting because she was 3 times divorced and admitted to cheating on all of her ex husbands. So she broke the 10 commandment rule against adultery, and went against Christs direct words by divorcing, but was basically saying “I can ignore anything in this religion but still use it to discriminate when it’s convenient.
Then we have Seyi Omooba, How interesting that she was trying to instruct people and convince them of her opinion on Facebook. Very interesting when you read a certain passage out of the Bible….1 Timothy 2:12
They (Women) should be silent and not be allowed to teach or to tell men what to do.
Hmmmm, and yet there she is, trying to teach and tell men what to do.
Again, these people are just simple bigots who ignore every single passage in the Bible that’s inconvenient to them and only pretend to be good Christians when they can use it to attack other people.
wikidBSTN
Nice effort, but the author makes a critical mistake by accepting poor, if not purposefully inaccurate, translations. For instance, 1 Corinthians 6:9 does not include “nor men who have sex with men”. A more accurate translation for this word/phrase would be “effeminate”. Over the past several decades, American evangelical churches have taken to “updating” translations to suit their bigoted views. For instances, the word “homosexual” doesn’t exist in ancient Hebrew or Greek (or Aramaic), so you should not see it in the Bible anywhere.
If you look with open eyes at an accurate translation, it is easy to see that what is being “criticized” in both the Old and New Testaments is people violating THEIR nature. Paul speaks of people engaged in sexual activity that was unnatural TO THEM. Even Leviticus which to many seems so clear – if you read the entire sentence, says that a man should not lie with another man AS HE LIES WITH A WOMAN. Gays don’t lie with women. The prohibition here is against heterosexual men violating their nature and laying with men. Note that “as he lies with a woman” is only used in this single prohibition – not the other prohibitions which direct men not to lie with (fill in the blank). Everyone in Biblical times knew what “to lie with meant” (sex). So its use in the prohibition about lying with other men is not to cue the reader into the fact that we are talking about sex, but to distinguish that we are not talking about all men, but those who lie with women (heterosexuals).
If this kind of stuff is of interest to you, I suggest that you get an older (not pre-selectively edited) version of the Bible and read those passages with an open mind while trying to remove deeply ingrained biases such as all men are first heterosexual and anything else is merely a deviation from that. In doing so, you will find that these passages actually bolster gay rights as they seek to enforce the view that God wants us to act consistent with our God-given nature and not against it. What could be more affirming for gay people than that?