The Hypocrisy of Christianists

One thing that is continually striking about Christianists is their selective application of the Bible - particularly the Old Testament. In this cherry picking process, LGBT individuals always find themselves faced by a strict application of a few carefully selected passages while countless other passages are utterly ignored by the self-proclaimed "godly Christians." Why does this happen? In my view, because LGBT individuals are a relative minority whereas the ignored passages would apply across the board to all - including the Christianists themselves. God forbid that inconvenient passages be applied to the falsely sanctimonious who denigrate others while acting like the Biblical Pharisees. Bob Felton at Civil Commotion (who is far more unkind to Christianists than I am) looks at the hypocrisy of those who claim the Bible to be inerrant and "the inspired word of God" yet treat its supposed dictates like a buffet from which they can pick and choose:

Rousas Rushdoony [the father of Christian Dominionism], for instance, once wrote an essay entitled The Sanctity of Life in which, despite the title, he upholds the death penalty and asserts that only the depraved object to it: . . . . from the Christian perspective capital punishment is not an option of the state, not a matter where civil government has a choice. The state has an ironclad law, the law of God, which it must obey, because the execution of criminals who incur the death penalty is required of the state at the penalty of the state’s own life if it disobeys.

Here are the Biblical death sentences:

■A man who refuses to impregnate his widowed sister-in-law

■Murderers

■Whoever strikes his father or mother

■Whoever steals a man is to be put to death

■A child who curses his parent(s)

■A stubborn and/or rebellious child

■A witch or sorcerer

■Anyone who sacrifices to other gods

■Adulterers

■Homosexuals

■If a man has sexual relations with both his wife and his mother-in-law, then all three of them must be put to death

■Those who commit bestiality

■A medium or wizard

■If a priest’s daughter becomes a prostitute, she is to be burnt with fire

■Blasphemers

■An unauthorized person who acts as a priest

■Anyone who causes someone to turn to another god

■A man is required to slay his friends and members of his own family who are guilty of worshipping another god

■A man who shows contempt for a judge or priest

■False prophets

■A betrothed virgin who is seduced in the city is to be put to death, unless she cried out

■Men and women who commit unnatural sexual acts

Someone in the mainstrem media needs to ask Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann point blank whether they support these "inerrant" dictates of the Bible (which sound like something from the Taliban's version of Islam) or not. The public needs to know just how far out of the mainstream they and their supporters among the GOP base and Tea Party are in fact.