Oh yeah? I didn’t know that, did you?

 

Many of the world's religions -- including Christianity -- supported same-sex unions, a reality obscured by modern-day shrill, conservative commentary.

Next time two young missionaries come to my home popping off about “Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve,” I might have to smile, give them a brownie and bring up trouble.

Some samples:

An icon from St. Catherine’s monastery on Mount Sinai illustrates this point. It shows two robed Christian saints getting married. Their pronubus(official witness, or “best man”) is none other than Jesus Christ.

It is a standard Roman portrayal of a wedding. The difference: the two saints are both male, Fourth Century Christian martyrs, Saint Serge and Saint Bacchus, close friends in the Roman army who were purportedly singled out for their secret adherence to Christianity before being tortured and killed.

Their unity, considered romantic by some historians and depicted through the image of marriage at St. Catherine’s monastery, was commemorated in many subsequent liturgies. The late Yale historian John Boswell found evidence for other Christian same-sex marriage ceremonies continuing even into the Eighteenth Century.

So social conservative religionists (or should I limit it to valued judgment fundamentalists) aren’t hitting the mark when they refer to the sacred institution established by God.

By the way, did you know that marriage has no patent, has no monopolistic exclusive relationship to fundamentalist Christianity regardless of which evangelical owner of truth gets skewered? Folks were marrying and giving in marriage long before Christianity reared it’s … no, long before Judaism reared its … you get the idea. No ownership of the institution.

It is true that all major religions exhibit some heterosexism, a bias in favor of heterosexuality over homosexuality. However, religions also have shown openness to same-sex unions, a reality that shrill conservative commentary, which dominates the public square on matters religious and sexual, has blocked from public view.

… Conservative Christians who swarm onto center stage in the current debates cite the anti-gay texts from the Bible, but even they do not take those passages seriously since the texts call for capital punishment for active gays. Not even the Tea Party folk favor that.

“Swarm” is a good choice of words here … like noisy crop destroying locusts.

… tolerance, often in the face of cruel intolerance, guided many early believers in Christianity. And, like early Christianity, other world religions have demonstrated tolerance toward same-sex unions.

And this final excerpt:

Lawmakers take note: because religions give this warranty and allow for this freedom of same-sex unions, laws that would legalize only the conservative religious view are in violation of religious freedom.

Religions are pluralistic on same-sex unions. It is not the function of law to curtail freedoms granted and authorized by mainstream religions.

Conservative Christians who insist that "traditional marriage" has always been "between a man and a woman" are wrong and historically uninformed. Thus, they are poor guides for lawmakers and judges.
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There is strong support in world religions for the view that homosexuality is not the problem; heterosexism is.