Of Hatred and Intolerance (Note: there be bad language here)

A friend of mine blogs over on wordpress and his last blog got me to thinking about certain elements of my overall religion. I wholly recommend you read his article it's full of smarts that you won't find here. The article he wrote is here: http://benephobia.wordpress.com/

So onto my rambling, warbling tirade.  My target today is the Westboro Baptist Church and others who are like them. As I wade through the vile filth that is Fred Phelps little website I hope those of you of faith say a quick prayer for me. Now for those of you who think like the WBC, I say this, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to my death your right to say it. ". But do not think that I will not exercise my right to speak out against you. Do not expect balanced here, this is not objective journalism of the highest quality, this is subjective, biased and likely to be just plain rude. You have been warned.

We'll start with the website and the shivers it's already sent down my spine. In fact we'll start with that title. Godhatesfags.com. Well that's not a great start is it.  "Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love." (1 John 4:8) So even if it's wrong to be gay, God doesn't hate you for it. To suggest God does anything other than love us whatever our flaws is missing a central point of Christianity I feel.

Moving on, and this is a big one. There's an entire grey box of bullshit here talking about the meaning of  their horrible little title. An explanation of why the title is correct, it evokes the absolute sovereignty of God. Well yes, the name God alone does that, lets look at the rest of this grey box. Their passages supporting God's hate are a little less connected to the concept. Those the specifically state hate are Psalms. Written very much by man. David specifically. Our understanding of God's emotions aren't going to be very good. I often suspect a weary pity would be closer to what God would feel for any stray children.  Now for the big one.  Their frenzied defense of the words hangs on the connection between the city of Sodom and  homosexuality. The Bible never calls homosexuals Sodomites, that's a very very human connection. We do because we know homosexual rape was going on in Sodom, as a result we connect the two and boom, homosexuals = sodomites.  But God did not condemn Sodom for homosexuality. He condemned it for a whole host of sins, not one righteous person in the entire city and so it burned. As a result most of the passages they use to justify the connection fail. Some have only a passing relevance at best. Of all the ones connecting God to hatred of homosexuality in the New Testament, only 1 Corinthians seems to actually connect.

The white box next to this is more of the same, again once we remove the Bibles reference to Sodomite meaning homosexual, everything else falls rather flat.

At this point I'm rather sick of reading this sewage. If I can muster the fortitude to go back to it I'll fill in the blanks later. I rather need some brain bleach.

So why do these hatemongers ply their trade using a Holy Book as their ammunition? Simple: because they can. The Bible is open to interpretation, it's God inspired , and written by man. It's believed to be protected from flaws by God, but that doesn't protect us from misinterpreting it. Which, given the language, and the fact it's nigh on 2000 years old is remarkably easy. Just look at the translations, the further we get from the original languages the Bible was written in (Hebrew for the Old and Greek for the New) the more we get into issues involving words with more than one similar meaning, or concepts for which there are no translation.  These don't make interpreting it any easier, heck my interpretation is likely to be every bit as wrong as theirs. Only difference is I don't advocate picketing the funerals of dead soldiers. Or in fact anything else they advocate, other than loving God. That I can get on board with.