After all, that seems to be about all that worthless rag seems to be good for lately. Consider their latest cover story–“Our Mutual Joy“, the attempt of one writer (Lisa Miller) to use Scripture to support homosexual marriage. She begins with an argument we have heard so many times from our LDS visitors:

Let’s try for a minute to take the religious conservatives at their word and define marriage as the Bible does. Shall we look to Abraham, the great patriarch, who slept with his servant when he discovered his beloved wife Sarah was infertile? Or to Jacob, who fathered children with four different women (two sisters and their servants)? Abraham, Jacob, David, Solomon and the kings of Judah and Israel—all these fathers and heroes were polygamists.

Ho-hum. This argument, when examined in light of Scripture, falls so flat on its face that even Joan Rivers’ plastic surgeon couldn’t fix it. Without going into detail, if you read the FULL accounts of these stories, you find that they paid a steep price for their adultery/polygamy (Abram + Hagar = Ishmael; David’s adultery with Bathsheba led to Absalom’s revolt; Solomon’s polygamy led to the troubles he outlines in Ecclesiastes. I adressed the issue of polygamy here.)

She then goes on to equate the “plight” of homosexuals being “denied the right to marry” with the battle over slavery in the US. I will not even dignify that crass accusation with comment.

Then she comes out with this gem:

To which there are two obvious responses: First, while the Bible and Jesus say many important things about love and family, neither explicitly defines marriage as between one man and one woman.

Uh…yeah…right. She might want to actually read the Bible before she comments on it. Matthew 19:4-6—And He answered and said to them, “Have you not read that He who madethem at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.” Who has she been having Bible study with? Jack Black? “A MAN shall be joned to his WIFE.” These are both in the SINGULAR. Man. Wife. No plurals. 1st Timothy 3:2, 12—A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, temperate, sober-minded, of good behavior…Let deacons be the husbands of one wife, ruling their children and their own houses well.

Social conservatives point to Adam and Eve as evidence for their one man, one woman argument—in particular, this verse from Genesis: “Therefore shall a man leave his mother and father, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh.” But as Segal says, if you believe that the Bible was written by men and not handed down in its leather bindings by God, then that verse was written by people for whom polygamy was the way of the world.

Continue reading →