Date: Tue, 10 May 94 00:52:05 -0400 Eastern
From: deb.price@glib.org

 
Biblical verses are used as crutches to prop up old biases
(copyright: The Detroit News, Aug. 20, 1993)
By Deb Price
 
    An engineering professor is treating her husband, a loan
officer, to dinner for finally giving in to her pleas to shave
off the scraggly beard he grew on vacation.
    His favorite restaurant is a casual place where they both
feel comfortable in slacks and cotton/polyester blend golf
shirts. But, as always, she wears the gold and pearl pendant he
gave her the day her divorce decree was final.
    They're laughing over their menus because they know he always
ends up diving into a giant plate of ribs but she won't be talked
into anything more fattening than shrimp.
    Quiz: How many biblical prohibitions are they violating?
    Well, wives are supposed to be "submissive" to their husbands
(I Peter 3:1). And all women are forbidden to teach men (I
Timothy 2:12), wear gold or pearls (I Timothy 2:9) or dress in
clothing that "pertains to a man" (Deuteronomy 22:5).
    Shellfish and pork are definitely out (Leviticus 11:7,10) as
are usury (Deuteronomy 23:19), shaving (Leviticus 19:27) and
clothes of more than one fabric (Leviticus 19:19). And since the
Bible rarely recognizes divorce, they're commiting adultery,
which carries the rather harsh penalty of death by stoning
(Deuteronomy 22:22).
    So why are they having such a good time? Probably because
they wouldn't think of worrying about rules that seem absurd,
anachronistic or--at best--unrealistic.
    Yet this same modern-day couple could easily be among the
millions of Americans who never hestitate to lean on the Bible to
justify their own anti-gay attitudes.
    Bible verses have long been used selectively to support many
kinds of discrimination. Somewhere along the way, Jesus' second-
greatest commandment gets lost: "You shall love your neighbor as
yourself."
     Once a given form of prejudice falls out of favor with
society, so do the verses that had seemed to condone it. It's
unimaginable today, for example, that anyone would use the Bible
to try to justify slavery.
     Yet when the abolitionist movement began to gain momentum in
the early 19th century, many southern ministers defended the
owning of human beings as a divinely approved system: "Slaves,
obey in everthing those who are your earthly masters..."
(Colossians 3:22).=
    In an influential anti-abolitionist essay, South Carolina
Baptist leader Richard Furman declared in 1822 that "the right of
holding slaves is clearly established in the Holy Scriptures."   
Meanwhile, anti-slavery crusaders were taking an interpretative
approach to the Bible since a literal reading "gave little or no
support to an abolitionist position," author Carl Degler says in
"Place Over Time: The Continuity of Southern Distinctiveness."
    Nearly 100 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, a
Virginia court defended racial segregation by saying, "The
Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and
red, and he placed them on separate continents....he did not
intend for the races to mix." The U.S. Supreme Court rejected
that ridiculous reasoning in 1967 when it struck down laws in 16
states forbidding interracial marriage.
    Like advocates of racial equality, suffragists found the
literal reading of the Bible was their biggest stumbling block.
Many ministers even condemned using anesthesia during labor
because pain in childbirth was punishment for Eve's bite of
forbidden fruit (Genesis 3:16).
    Susan B. Anthony eventually declared in frustration: "I
distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do,
because I notice it always coincides with their own desires."
    Studying the Bible is often akin to looking at Rorschach ink
blots, says biblical scholar Joe Edward Barnhart, author of "The
Southern Baptist Holy War." "What we get out of it is sometimes
what we put into it," he explains.
    The punishment the Bible metes out to all men for Adam's
downfall is toiling "in the sweat of your face" (Genesis 3:19).
Yet, Barnhart notes with a laugh, there's one bit of progress
never denounced by preachers hot under the clerical collar: air
conditioning.