What the Bible tells us about marriage
by digby
As we listen to all these preachers, politicians and Christian laypeople drone on and on and on about how their religious beliefs are being violated because the Bible says marriage is between one man and one woman and legalizing gay marriage is a form of discrimination against Christians, read this piece by Juan Cole about what the Bible actually says about marriage. Hint: there’s not a thing about gays and a whole lot about plural marriage. Lots and lots. And about wives being sex slaves who belong to their husbands. It’s scary.
He concludes with this:
[As for Biblical marriage],you can do that in all kinds of imaginative ways– take two wives and someone else’s sex slave as Abraham did, or 300 sex slaves as Solomon did (not to mention the 700 wives), or your brother’s widow in addition to your own wife. And remember, if your sex slave runs away because you’re cruel to the person, the Bible (Philemon) says that other people have the duty to return the slave to you, i.e. basically imposes the duty of trafficking slaves back to sadistic sex maniacs who exploit them. But if the owner is nice and a good Christian, he might consider letting the sex slave go. But he doesn’t have to.
Oh, and for all this blathering all morning on the various shows from people like Cokie Roberts about how marriage is the only natural way to live (thus making unmarried people into some kind of freaks) I’d just point out that (as far as we know) Jesus was a single guy. But who cares about him? After all, when Scalia said “ask a hippie” it’s really just another way of asking WWJD.
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