The Rhetoric Gap

When people talk about culture of life, but their decisions are based on a culture of money…

When people invoke scripture against gays, but not against poverty…

There’s a rhetoric gap. And it needs to be used. It needs to be used to cut the Republican party down to the ground, to smash it to pieces.

(And maybe, once we raise consciousness enough, we can move past using two parties to polarize discourse, and politics can become a culture of discussion and compromise and responsibility, instead of a pathetic soccer game for a gang of greedy boys.)

Kat provides this:

(click on the image above to see the full sized original in a popup window)

Meanwhile, my good friend John alerts me to a good interview with evangelical Jim Wallis, on the falseness of the Republican claim to be on the side of God. (As if it weren’t obvious.)

Religious or not, you have to admit that the Republican claim to being a Christian outfit is hogwash, bullshit, except in the sense that Christianity retains its sullied status from the days when it was used to justify slavery and murder abroad:

Jesus didn’t speak at all about homosexuality. There are about 12 verses in the Bible that touch on that question. Most of them are very contextual. There are thousands of verses on poverty. I don’t hear a lot of that conversation.

What surprises me is that more decent Christians don’t rise up and punish the Republican party for hijacking the rhetoric of faith and putting it to the use of supporting—aiding and abetting—big business in their conquest of the human world. Me, I’m against mixing religion and politics, but if the Republicans are going to do it as brazenly as they are—to counter every value crucial to actual Christian morality—then I wouldn’t mind the Democrats doing it, a little jadedly, as long as they were actually pursuing a politics and economics of economic and social justice. (Not that the Dems are actually pursuing that now… but hell, maybe the adoption of the rhetoric might even drive them to do it more.)

America, this might sound too sci-fi for you, but I am telling you, in all seriousness: the War on Terror is a distraction from the real war, that the Republicans and those whom they answer to—big businesses—are waging on humanity worldwide. And now they’ve even conscripted Yahweh, as if your God were some pimply teenaged kid whose wishes don’t matter, as long as He is of use to the State.

Are you going to let them get away with that?

Again?

8 thoughts on “The Rhetoric Gap

  1. Hello Gord,

    I agree with a lot of what your post says.

    This oft-repeated line, “Jesus didn’t speak at all about homosexuality,” however, reminded of something that a great blogger (whom I think your blog may have introduced me to) wrote not long back:

    From Camassia:The silence of the Lamb:

    “[S]uppose it’s true, and Jesus never spoke of or even thought about homosexuality. What does that mean? Apparently, that he didn’t have a problem with a society that officially punished sodomy with death. Whatever his own opinion, he didn’t see the attitudes toward homosexuality in Jewish society as being unjust enough to speak out against. Given his affirmations of Mosaic law at various points, it’s not surprising that Jewish Christians assumed that laws that he did not specifically criticize should be left intact.”

    Please read the rest of her post to put these words into the context she intended.

    I post this not to attack, but just to provoke further thought on the issue, something which Camassia’s words did with me.

    Pax,

  2. The “oft-repeated line” is oft-repeated because it’s true. He didn’t speak out against homosexuality, but he did speak out against putting people to death for what others considered their sins—such as a certain woman who was almost stoned for adultery. You didn’t see him ransack a whorehouse, but he did cast someone out of the temple. Who was that again? What were they doing?

    Oh yeah, profiting off religion. Like the Republicans.

    Yes, he affirmed Mosaic Law. Yes, he didn’t specifically criticize the rare injunctions against Christianity. But he certainly amplified the injunctions against greed and profiteering, which are not only the main business of the Republicans but the basis of the Western world and the global economy as we’re setting it up to work. He violently castigated all of the things in his own society that could be associated or compared to all of that.

    Meanwhile, people whine and simper about whether gays ought to get married, and you’re clarifying that just because he didn’t directly castigate homosexuality, doesn’t mean he wasn’t against it.

    Why is the clarification even necessary? I mean, what is with this obsessive interest in the sexual lives of other people? There are oodles of injunctions against poverty being enforced on others, against greed and materialism; tons of them, as Mr. Wallis points out, thousands. Certainly the impetus behind it being brought up so much is to drive home an unarguable, clear opposition to these things. And yet they are completely acceptable, the basis of the world we’re living in and setting up, more firmly instantiating with every passing year.

    And yet a few scattered scriptures about sexuality get all kinds of people not only riled up, arguing, clarifying, researching scripture.

    It’s like reading the manual for a car and focusing on the section titled, “Never wash the leather bucket seats with soap, iot’s bad for the finish” and skipping the safety sections, the road rules, and the key to the tune-up lights on the dashboard. The obvious stuff is being overlooked for the most obscure little bits… and what’s worse, the obscure bits are the ones that are applicable to others, where the obvious bits are pertinent to many of those who seem to consider themselves faithful.

    So to whatever degree that you consider the clarification about homosexuality necessary, I think you are being distracted from much more basic concerns that deserve much more voice, and deluded about the “importance” of these issues. Nobody dies from homosexuality. Nobody starves because of it. Many, many people suffer and die from poverty every day. So which issue deserves our attention, the legal (though not religious) sanctioning of gay marriage, or world poverty, including the wars brought about by business interests, the exploitation of labourers worldwide, the amassing of capital by the ever-shrinking elites?

    Only a madman would think that gay marriage deserves any more attention at the present time. Sorry, but that’s a frank assessment.

    But of course, those concerns being voiced will never go well, especially not among Republicans. They have people deluded and distracted.

  3. Furthermore, to whatever degree Kierkegaard is correct—arguable, I know, but I’m not particularly interested enough to investigate, as the whole discussion sounds irrelevant to me in its near-Manicheism—the single state is preferred to the married state in any case, and the whole Christian endorsement of marriage of any kind as a “norm” is not a commendable one.

    The rest of the arguments about marriage I’ll leave aside, since I’ve typed them enough myself, and know full well all the holes in the standard Christian responses to my arguments. The last point to arrive at is, of course, that a proper democracy is not a theocracy, that minorities have equal rights, and you can’t force me to obey your religion (nor can I force you to obey mine). So this is not a religious issue but an issue of human rights. Ban gay marriage in your little church, fine, that’s your religious right, but that has nothing to do with the government.

  4. If I recall, the early Christians ran into quite a few problems because the State (Rome) didn’t cotton to their religious beliefs. This is a religion that defines its existence on the persecution and murder of its founder on the basis of State disapproval for his religious beliefs, yet many Christians these days seem annoyingly dead set upon imposing their religious beliefs on everyone they can.

    Some old guy in a red dress doesn’t like a crappy conspiracy novel? Cry me a river – he can simply not buy the book.

    An even older dude that wears a white dress and golden slippers gets all irate at the thought of two dudes smooching? Not my frickin’ problem. I’m not forcing him to lock lips with a hunky, well-oiled member of the US Olympic swimming team (pardon me while I think about that for a bit. mmmm-MMM!)

    Joshua, can I ask you something, seeing as you probably have that information handy? Which Levitical laws did Jesus specifically condemn? I’m wondering specifically about dietary laws.

  5. Adam,

    Jesus of course did not condemn the dietary laws nor any Levitical laws. It was in the Apostolic age that it was revelaed that Gentile converts did have to follow them. The only law I can think of off hand that Jesus altered was the removal of the provision for divorce and the elevation of marriage to a Sacrament.

    He did save the adulterous woman from stoning, telling her to “go and sin no more.”

    I can sense where you’re trying to go with this: that the Old Testament injunctions against homosexual acts can now be ignored. That argument would ignore the Apostle Paul’s words on the matter. It would also ignore Tradition and God’s other great testimony, Nature.

    In the previous thread, you said that the Church condemned you to hell for being “into the wrong people.” First, the Catholic Church affirms that some folks are in Heaven, the saints, but it never affirms that any individual is in Hell. To do so would be a grave sin. Secondly, having a propensity or dispensation toward some sinful behavior, be it anger, pride, same-sex attraction, etc., is not in itself sinful. Acts of the will constitiute sins

    One more thing, the vestments of the pope and the cardinals are not dresses. Saying the same thing about the clothes worn by Arabs or Indians would be called ignorance or bigotry.

    Pax,

  6. Jesus of course did not condemn the dietary laws nor any Levitical laws. It was in the Apostolic age that it was revelaed that Gentile converts did have to follow them. The only law I can think of off hand that Jesus altered was the removal of the provision for divorce and the elevation of marriage to a Sacrament.

    So who gets to pick and choose, then? It all seems rather post-modern to me. My discussions with leftist christians have covered this, and for the ones I’ve talked to, it boils down to an acknowledgment that that Bible was written by fallible men, and that the world in which we live changes, thus one cannot expect that something written between 1000 and 4000 years ago will be entirely relevant today. On the other side, I’ve spoken with fundamentalists and catholics who claim that the Bible is inerrant, and one should obey the laws in the bible – but only the ones they think are important. Do you see the difference? One side uses the Bible as a weapon – “God hates fags!” “Abortion is murder!” “Don’t read shitty conspiracy novels!” and the other side is a lot more rational about it.

    He did save the adulterous woman from stoning, telling her to “go and sin no more.”

    Good for Jesus! Such a nice boy, it’s a real shame about that whole nailed to a cross business.

    I can sense where you’re trying to go with this: that the Old Testament injunctions against homosexual acts can now be ignored. That argument would ignore the Apostle Paul’s words on the matter.

    Curses! Foiled again in my attempts to use clever sophistry to derail your arguments!

    So the Apostle Paul is the authority on what laws to follow, then? Who elected him? I certainly don’t recall getting a vote on this. Which Mosaic laws, specifically, did he say we could ignore, and which ones must we obey?

    It would also ignore Tradition and God’s other great testimony, Nature.

    Tradition – like the traditions of the ancient Greeks? How long do we have to bugger each other (and it’s been going on for thousands of years) before it gets to be a tradition?

    Nature? The same nature that gave us gay penguins? It ain’t just the penguins, either.

    Are you saying that myappreciation of the penis is an aberration? That it’s somehow against nature? Is that what you’re claiming? From what I’ve seen, celibacy is much more aberrant than homosexuality. It’s been a tradition for living beings to reproduce ever since the first cell split in two, so I’d say in terms of upholding “tradition”, the leaders of the church are really falling down on the job.

    In the previous thread, you said that the Church condemned you to hell for being “into the wrong people.” First, the Catholic Church affirms that some folks are in Heaven, the saints, but it never affirms that any individual is in Hell. To do so would be a grave sin. Secondly, having a propensity or dispensation toward some sinful behavior, be it anger, pride, same-sex attraction, etc., is not in itself sinful. Acts of the will constitiute sins.

    How nice of you guys to make that distinction. As long as I don’t indulge my desire to be covered in oil and roll around on latex sheets with the Australian men’s Olympic swim team, I won’t be committing a sin. Of course, I’m still not allowed to think about it, am I? Good thing I’m not Catholic, then.

    One more thing, the vestments of the pope and the cardinals are not dresses. Saying the same thing about the clothes worn by Arabs or Indians would be called ignorance or bigotry.

    Please, forgive me for calling the masculinity of the leaders of the RCC into question. Of course they don’t wear dresses. They wear vestments. Long, flowing, fabulously accessorized vestments. The fact that they don’t want to have anything to do with those icky, stinky girls means nothing. Move along.

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