Seyi Omooba is a British actress who shouted “Gay!” in a crowded theater.

Actually, it was more “Gay is wrong!” She made a social media comment saying that the Bible is clear that being gay is wrong and you can’t be born gay. (Let’s leave aside the question of whether those claims can even co-exist.) As a result, she lost a part in a play. She’s now suing the theater and her agent.

The first part of this series (1) summarized the incident; (2) argued that it’s Christians who say things about homosexuality, not the Bible; and (3) explored the free speech issue. Let’s continue with a thought experiment to see the case from another angle.

Justification

The Christian Legal Centre tried to minimize Omooba’s insult with this example:

The presence of a homosexuality theme in the play is a very poor excuse for discriminating against a Christian actress. If we were talking about a lesbian actress playing a Christian character, nobody would dare to suggest that her sexual lifestyle would make her unsuitable, and that you could fire her without breaking the law.

Are you kidding? Imagine a play with an out lesbian as Mary Magdalene or Mary the mother of Jesus. I can imagine the same thing happening in reverse: with the target audience largely Christian, a single tweet could ignite Christian outrage, and that actress would get replaced to avoid a theatrical flop.

But notice the difference: a lesbian playing Mary Magdalene wouldn’t be criticizing Christians, straight people, or the memory of Mary Magdalene. By contrast, Omooba stated in her post that homosexuals should deny who they are (or else!) while putting no equivalent constraint on herself or her fellow straight Christians. She also said that no one is “born gay.” (Does she think that all people who identify as homosexual are taking on a new persona as if living in some sort of perpetual Halloween?)

I’m sure that she felt that her post was a generous and constructive statement—that we’re all in the same imperfect boat and God loves you and has provided a route to salvation—but I think I share the offense felt by the actor who outed that five-year-old post. “Hate the sin; love the sinner” may be as distasteful for the homosexual as “I love you, but you’re going to hell” aimed at the atheist. In either situation, being told that you deserve an eternity of torture in hell for living your life in a way that is honest to who you are and that hurts no one else is simply offensive.

In one of the news articles I read on this incident, one commenter asked, would it be acceptable for someone with public antisemitic views to have a leading role in Fiddler on the Roof, a play with a Jewish theme? If the response is that this comparison is unfair because antisemitic views are fringe while Christian views that gays deserve to be in hell are not, why should “it’s a religious belief” cover for a hateful view? Does Christianity deserve a fig leaf just because it’s a venerable tradition?

What the Bible says about homosexuality

There are six Bible passages that are typically used to make God’s anti-gay case. Understand them, and you’ll see that they don’t make an anti-gay case, at least not one that is relevant today.

I’ll list them below and give a brief response. Links are given to posts that discuss them in more detail.

• Genesis 19:4–25 is the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. The lesson of the Sodom and Gomorrah story isn’t that homosexuality is bad, it’s that rape is bad. More here and here.
• Leviticus 18:22 labels homosexual sex as an abomination. The problem is, this part of Leviticus lists lots of things as abominations—eating ham or shrimp, men wearing women’s clothes, sowing two kinds of seeds, tattooing, wearing cotton/polyester blends, and so on. These are ritual abominations, not actions that are objectively harmful to someone else. If Christians can dismiss the prohibition against pork because that’s an outdated custom, they can do the same for the rule against homosexuality. More here.
• The same treatment applies to Leviticus 20:13. We need to see Old Testament prohibitions against homosexuality in the context of the time. One of the understood categories of male-male homosexual sex in that uncertain time was as a fertility rite—a fertility rite that was traditional within the other tribes. The Hebrew religion described in Leviticus defined rules that set their tribe apart—no ham, no tattooing, and no fertility rites to another god. These are “abominations” because they’re religious offenses. More here.
• Romans 1:26–27 says, in part, “The men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts.” This passage imagines straight men who “abandon the natural function of the woman” and have sex with other men. Yes, that’s kinky, but it has nothing to do with homosexuals in loving relationships. More here.
• 1 Corinthians 6:9–11 lists categories of bad people, including those who engage in homosexual sex, who won’t “inherit the kingdom of God.” But the same book says, “Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says” (1 Cor. 14:34–5). If the latter is an outdated Old Testament custom, the same could be said for the former. More here.
• 1 Timothy 1:9–10 gives a similar list. It mixes ritual abominations like homosexuality and idolatry with actual crimes like theft and murder. And it has its own misogyny: “I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet” (2:11–14). Like the 1 Corinthians 6 passage, this references back to Old Testament laws that we’ve seen are irrelevant. More here.

Remember the parable of the Good Samaritan? The Pharisee and the Levite walked past an injured man because they didn’t want to become ritually unclean. The Torah didn’t forbid touching blood or a dead person, it simply said that you would need to ritually cleanse yourself afterwards. The moral of the story isn’t just that you must help people in need. In addition, it’s that if there is a rule or tradition that gets in the way of your helping people, violate that rule. Outdated Old Testament laws belong in the same bin as Bible rules supporting slavery, and Christians have no problem seeing that slavery has no place in modern society.

Jesus himself showed how the priority works when he said, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.”

Concluded in part 3.

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Image from christian buehner, CC license
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In 2015, Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis decided that she would ignore the obligations of her job and pick what parts she would and wouldn’t perform. She imagined that the Bible makes a clear, relevant statement against homosexuality (it doesn’t) and refuse to issue marriage licenses because some of those would be for same-sex couples (more in part 1).

Let’s turn to a more famous church/state clash to see a different, less selfish way to approach public service.

We’ve seen this before

John F. Kennedy ran for president in 1960. Some Americans were concerned that JFK, as a Catholic, would see the pope as a higher authority and answer to him rather than the Constitution or the American people. One radio evangelist of the time said, “Each person has the right to their own religious belief [but] the Roman Catholic ecclesiastical system demands the first allegiance of every true member and says in a conflict between church and state, the church must prevail.”

In other words, how did we know that JFK wouldn’t do a Kim Davis?

JFK famous responded to this challenge:

I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute, where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote; where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference; and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the president who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.

I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish; where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source; [and] where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials. . . .

I believe in a president whose religious views are his own private affair, neither imposed by him upon the nation, or imposed by the nation upon him as a condition to holding that office.

JFK explicitly rejected what Kim Davis embraced. That’s how it’s done.

The U.S. Constitution calls the tune

The bottom line is that the Bible isn’t the supreme law of the land—the Constitution is.

Be not confused: the United States doesn’t exist and run because God said so; instead, Christians can preach and worship because the Constitution says so. If the law offends you, you can argue that it’s unjust, you can work to have it changed, or you can leave. We have a 100% secular constitution that defines a 100% secular means for making, changing, and upholding laws.

I hear Pakistan puts God first in their law—maybe Kim Davis would like that better.

“The sky is falling!”

Conservatives were quick to tell us that this incident was the beginning of overt Christian persecution. A Christian Post columnist at the time said, “For years now I and others have been warning that committed Christians could soon face jail time in America for holding to our convictions.”

Not really. Christian county clerks can object to same-sex marriages, Christian pharmacists can object to emergency contraceptives, Muslim flight attendants can object to serving alcohol, and Christian bakers and photographers can object to same-sex weddings, but do your job. Don’t sign up, then claim oppression and refuse to do what you promised to do.

To anticipate some jobs that a devout Christian might belatedly realize conflict with biblical principles, Huffington Post has a list of jobs to avoid. You wouldn’t want to be a clerk selling mixed fabrics (which are explicitly prohibited by the Bible), fishing for shellfish (prohibited), or teaching as a woman (prohibited). Are these examples ridiculous? Then ditto a clerk who objects to same-sex marriage (not explicitly prohibited) but has no problem with marrying divorced people (prohibited).

Another Christian Post columnist said, “Every serious biblical Christian will have to consider what to do now—whether a baker being asked to provide a wedding cake for a same-sex marriage against her conscience, a county clerk faced with issuing a marriage license to a homosexual couple, or a pastor being requested to perform a wedding between two women or two men.” Let me answer that for you: the baker is obliged to follow public accommodation laws that prohibit discrimination, county clerks must do their jobs, and the U.S. has laws protecting pastors.

This last one is always on the list, even though pastors are protected, both by the First Amendment and by Supreme Court precedent. Remember Loving v. Virginia, the 1967 Supreme Court decision that made mixed-race marriage legal? That is binding only on governments, not pastors. Pastors can and do refuse to perform mixed-race marriages. The same is true for same-sex marriages. Even the Family Research Council (a Christian organization) agrees. Hysteria about constraints on the clergy is popular because it rallies the troops, not because it’s realistic.

This reminds me of Glenn Beck’s hysteria on the eve of the Obergefell decision legalizing same-sex marriage. He declared that there were upwards of 10,000 pastors “that I think will walk through a wall of fire, you know, and possible death.”

Who did he imagine on the other side with the flaming torches?

Kim Davis: another Rosa Parks?

Rosa Parks was the African-American woman who refused to sit in the back of the bus in 1955. One of Kim Davis’s supporters finds much similarity between the two women. If Rosa Parks shouldn’t have to get off the bus, why should Kim Davis? He asks, “Will Kim Davis be the Rosa Parks of the movement?”

The difference, of course, is that Rosa Parks had her civil rights infringed upon, while Kim Davis is trying to infringe on the civil rights of others. If Kim Davis feels that the Bible has something to say about Obergefell, she can express that view, and every atheist I can think of will support her right to free speech. What she can’t do is impose that outside the law.

Will Kim Davis be the Rosa Parks of the conservative anti-same-sex marriage movement? A four-times-married person setting herself up as the arbiter of marriage might indeed be an appropriate saint for this ridiculous up-is-down and Ignorance-is-Strength movement.

Related post: “Being on the Wrong Side of History on Same-Sex Marriage? Worse than You Think.”

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 9/8/15.)

Image credit: Wikimedia
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