Jack Kelly Sunday

In today's Post-Gazette,  it takes Jack Kelly all of his 22 paragraphs to play the Nazi card.

In denouncing the so-called "intolerance of the left" he ends his column by referring to those on the "secular left" who want members of the LGBT community to be free of faith-based intolerance as "dime store Nazis."

Yes, he did. 

But let's start with his theology as he spends much of his time with his spectacled nose in the Bible - justifying his own cultural myopia.

Jack writes:

I don’t think a person’s sexual preference has anything to do with character — or is any of my business.

I applaud gays in long-term, monogamous relationships. They ought to have the same legal protections as if they were married. But I’m against gay marriage, because God said marriage is between a man and a woman, and I take Him at His word.

While I am not sure exactly where in the Bible Jack finds God's definition of marriage, I am guessing it wouldn't that far from this:

4 And he answered and said, Have ye not read, that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female,

5 and said, For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and the two shall become one flesh?

6 So that they are no more two, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. (Matthew 19:4-6)

The "he" in those passages would be Jesus, of course.  And while it's a definition of joining just one man to just one woman into just one flesh it's also, in a way, an anti-divorce pronouncement (let no man put asunder what god has joined and all that), isn't it ?

Let me say that I applaud Jack for the first three of his sentences above - it's a good thing he's not among teh crazie intolerants of the right.  Like this guy in California:

A California lawyer has devised an initiative titled “The Sodomite Suppression Act.” Yes, this isn’t something from The Onion or National Report, this is a very real ballot initiative designed by someone who is both nutty and probably thinks more about making sexy time more than members of the gay community do.

The telling part is found in the text of the initiative:

SODOMITE SUPPRESSION ACT
Penal Code section 39

a) The abominable crime against nature known as buggery, called also sodomy, is a monstrous evil that Almighty God, giver of freedom and liberty, commands us to suppress on pain of our utter destruction even as he overthrew Sodom and Gomorrha.

b) Seeing that it is better that offenders should die rather than that all of us should be killed by God's just wrath against us for the folly of tolerating wickedness in our midst, the people of California wisely command, in the fear of God, that any person who willingly touches another person of the same gender for purposes of sexual gratification be put to death by bullets to the head or by any other convenient method.

I'm just not so sure about Jack's last sentence.  I mean that California lawyer presumably takes God at His word, too, right?  And Leviticus does say this, right?

And if a man lie with mankind, as with womankind, both of them have committed abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.

So now I'm confused.  Jack says he takes God at His word and Jack's God says that men who have sex with men should be put to death.  But Jack says he applauds "gays in long-term monogamous relationships."  So when does Jack applaud?  Is that before or after they're put to death?  Does Jack Kelly take God at His word or not?

While we're talking about it, here's a question for you, Jack.  What are some of the other acts in the Bible that are punishable by death?

Exodus 31:15

Six days shall work be done, but on the seventh day is a sabbath of solemn rest, holy to Jehovah: whosoever doeth any work on the sabbath day, he shall surely be put to death.

Leviticus 24:16

And he that blasphemeth the name of Jehovah, he shall surely be put to death; all the congregation shall certainly stone him: as well the sojourner, as the home-born, when he blasphemeth the name of Jehovah, shall be put to death.

I'm writing this on a Sunday and while I'm not getting paid for it it's certainly work.  Oh, and I admit it, I'm also mocking The Word of God.

Shouldn't I be put to death as well?  I mean, if you take God at His word, you kinda hafta answer with a hearty (and self-righteous) "Hell, yea!" don't you?

We can go on like this for hours but it does raise a bigger question: what does any of  this have to do with public policy or the law?  Should centuries-old ignorance have any place in how a just society orders itself?

If we take The Word - all of it, not just the nice parts - as a serious plan for how we treat each other, then misery must surely follow (Death to the adulterers! Death to those who blaspheme!)

Each of us is certainly free to believe what we want to believe, but in a free society all citizens are to be treated fairly and equally and any restrictions on that fairness and equality (even if they're faith-based) simply have no place in a just society.