"The Stench of [Zorn's] Ignorance"

No interest here in revisiting the Mississippi lesbian prom-date scandal.  But it's worth raking over the presuppositions in that dead conversation.

Laura Higgins of the Illinois Family Institute (IFI) sounds off at Eric Zorn of the Chicago Tribune thusly:

The only thing racism shares in common with the belief that volitional homosexual acts are immoral is that Zorn hates both.

There's huge irony in turning the word "hate" on Zorn, particularly a hatred of "belief."  Hatred of belief is intrinsic to a democracy: you must love one belief and hate another to engage other people in a deliberative democracy.  

What you must not do is conspire to deprive those whose beliefs you hate of their liberties.  

Higgins again, this time in yet deeper confusion:

If that's all that's required for Zorn to see equivalence, then I guess in Zorn's strange moral universe, disapproval of polyamory, adult consensual incest, or paraphilias is equivalent to racism, which in turn would make polyamory, adult consensual incest, and paraphilias ontologically equivalent to race. In reality, race or skin color is ontologically equivalent to biological sex--not to homosexuality.

Well, it's Higgins who raises the issue of "ontological equivalence."  That's not Zorn's point.  Words mean things, and what Zorn has said is not that racial discrimination and discrimination against homosexuals are ontologically related.  He's said that discrimination is discrimination.

And as for polyamory, adult consensual incest, and paraphilias, let's pose the question to Higgins: why are they wrong?  We can doubtless point to actual reasons.

Why is homosexuality wrong?  Can we point to similar reasons besides, "Higgins does not approve"?

Maybe so.  They do not appear in Higgins' article, however, and this is significant.  She uses the term "traditional beliefs on homosexuality," which may be code for "Because it's always been this way," which is a terrible argument, or code for "Because the Bible says it's an abomination.""Not Hate: Holy."

Ah. 

Here again we see the idolatry of text as opposed to word.  Truly Jesus said, "The letter killeth."  

Well, it just does.  It deprives of rights.  It establishes boundaries of conduct, but whether those boundaries are lifegiving or not is a matter of history, as the gospels acknowledge when they open the floodgates to unclean foods.

Note that I don't argue against Higgins' positions (whatever they are... we can guess safely enough) on gay marriage or whatever.  Just against the background noise: "Gays are second-class, this I know / for the Bible tells me so."  

And Christians: good grief.  Think this through.  Really.  It's a book.  It's not God.

Can God speak through the Bible if Christians hold it up in the place of God?

I seriously doubt it.