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What kind of character are the schools building, anyway?
Posted By katie allison granju
Charles Maldonado takes a closer look at the controversy I blogged about last week, in which folks from the Franklin Graham Festival were allowed to come into Knox County schools to build some character.
But in the same issue of Metro Pulse is a front-page feature on what it’s like to be a gay student attending Knox County public schools.
the Knox County Board of Education was attempting to protect kids—and school employees—from the harassment LGBT teens commonly experience, out or not.
It reworded a harassment policy in July 2006 to include “any gesture, written on paper or electronically, verbal, physical or psychological act… motivated by any actual or perceived characteristic, such as race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression.”
All these measures put Knox County light years ahead of other school systems in East Tennessee in its approach to teens who are not heterosexual, says David Massey, one of the founders and adult coordinators of Spectrum Cafe, an outreach ministry of the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church that’s met since 2001 and is aimed at supporting teens who self-identify as LGBT, who are questioning their sexual orientation or gender identity, and their straight friends and allies. “They are indicators that things are moderating in our county, but it doesn’t mean that we’re out of the woods.”
Despite such innovations, to be LGBT in public high school still means verbal abuse and physical harassment from peers, and from faculty. Students, many of whom did not feel safe speaking for publication or were underage and prevented by their guardians, matter-of-factly report graphic sexual taunts, threats made by football players to kill a person once he steps off school property, people tearing up GSA posters in full view of their creators and leaving hate notes on a gay person’s MySpace page, a teacher who told an entire club that a homosexual boy wore women’s underwear.
So answer me this: how is the schools’ official policy on non-harassment supported - and how are gay students better protected - by offering “character-building” programs by a group which openly states its belief that gay people are sinners who need to be “saved” from who they are? Doesn’t this message actually fundamentally oppose Knox County Schools’ own policies and operating philosophy?
May 1st, 2008
Obviously you haven’t read much Bible. It clearly states that homosexual acts are an abomination before God. A sin. Franklin Graham and many other Christians, being devout and not picking and choosing what they believe and don’t believe, will state this fact. What you, and so many others here, just don’t seem to be able to grasp is that Christians also believe and follow Christ’s command to hate the sin, but love the sinner.
It’s not that hard to understand. It’s called tolerance. And Christian love.
A Letter to Louise
http://www.godmademegay.com/
I know you won’t take time to read the letter, it’s tediously long. With a URL like that, you probably won’t even visit it because your friends may discover that your browser has a history of visiting a site with such an address.
The letter was written by a Baptist preacher who has come to the realization that organized religion has done far more harm than good with its misinterpretation of biblical texts.
From “A Letter to Louise”
by Reverend Bruce W. Lowe:
“Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13
Revised Standard Version:
22 You shall not lie with a male as with a woman, it is an abomination.
13 If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death…
The King James and New International versions say virtually the same thing.
Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 are the only direct references to same-gender sex in the Old Testament. They are both part of the Old Testament Holiness Code, a religious, not a moral code; it later became the Jewish Purity Laws. ["Abomination" is used throughout the Old Testament to designate sins that involve ethnic contamination or idolatry. The word relates to the failure to worship God or to worshiping a false god; it does not relate to morality.] Professor Soards tell us, “Old Testament experts view the regulations of Leviticus as standards of holiness, directives for the formation of community life, aimed at establishing and maintaining a people’s identity in relation to God.”B-4 This is because God was so determined that his people would not adopt the practices of the Baal worshipers in Canaan, and same-gender sex was part of Baal worship. (The laws say nothing about women engaging in same-gender sex; probably this had to do with man’s dominance, and such acts by the subservient had nothing to do with religious impurity.)
God required purity for his worship. Anything pure was unadulterated, unmixed with anything else These Purity Laws prohibited mixing different threads in one garment, sowing a field with two kinds of seed, crossbreeding animals. A few years ago in Israel when an orthodox government came into power, McDonalds had to stop selling cheeseburgers. Hamburgers, OK. Cheese sandwiches, OK. But mixing milk and meat in one sandwich violated the Purity Laws–it had nothing to do with morality. These were laws about worshipping God, not ethics, and so have no bearing on our discussion of morality. Helmut Thielicke remarks on these passages: “It would never occur to anyone to wrench these laws of cultic purification from their concrete situation and give them the kind of normative authority that the Decalogue, for example, has.”B-5
Another reason they are not pertinent to our discussion is that these laws were for the particular time and circumstances existing when they were given. If you planted a fruit tree, you could not eat its fruit until its fifth year, and all fruit the fourth year must be offered to the Lord. A worker must be paid his wage on the day of his labor. You must not harvest a field to its edge. We readily dismiss most of them as not applicable to our day and culture, and if we dismiss some of them for any reason, we have to dismiss all of them, including the sexual regulations, for that same reason.”
Abiding by the same texts, you are sinning if you use a credit card to pay a workman or if you eat an oyster. You too seem to be picking and choosing what you believe and what you don’t believe.
I wonder if Franklin Graham eats oysters.
And another thing!
Hating the sin while loving the sinner means that you can still love a cheeseburger eater.
I CORINTHIANS 6:9,10
DO YOU NOT KNOW THAT THE WICKED WILL NOT INHERIT THE KINGDOM OF GOD? DO NOT BE DECEIVED: NEITHER THE SEXUALLY IMMORAL NOR IDOLATERS NOR ADULTERERS NOR MALE PROSTITUTES NOR HOMOSEXUAL OFFENDERS (10) NOR THIEVES NOR SWINDLERS WILL INHERIT THE KINGDOM OF GOD.
Work that all caps, Charlie.
You didn’t read the letter, did you?
It was too much work.
Again from the letter:
“I Corinthians 6:9
King James Version:
9…Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate [malakoi], nor abusers of themselves with mankind [arsenokoitai], 10 Nor thieves…, shall inherit the kingdom of God.
New International Version
9…Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes [malakoi] nor homosexual offenders [arsenokoitai] 10 nor thieves…will inherit the kingdom of God.
Revised Standard Version–1952 edition:
9…Do not be deceived; neither the immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals [malakoi and arsenokoitai], 10 nor thieves…, will inherit the kingdom of God.
Revised Standard Version–1971 edition:
9…Do not be deceived; neither the immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor sexual perverts [malakoi and arsenokoitai], 10 nor thieves…, will inherit the kingdom of God.
A comparison of how the two Greek words are translated in the different versions shows that translations often, unfortunately, become the interpretations of the translators. In I Cor. 6:9 Paul lists the types of persons who will be excluded from the kingdom of God and for some he uses the Greek words malakoi and arsenokoitai. KJ translates the first “effeminate,” a word that has no necessary connection with homosexuals. The NIV translates the first “male prostitutes” and the second, “homosexual offenders”. The RSV in its first edition of 1952 translated both words by the single term, “homosexuals”. In the revised RSV of 1971, the translation “homosexuals” is discarded and the two Greek words are translated as “sexual perverts”; obviously the translators had concluded the earlier translation was not supportable.
Malakoi literally means “soft” and is translated that way by both KJ and RSV in Matt. 11:8 and Luke 7:25. When it is used in moral contexts in Greek writings it has the meaning of morally weak; a related word, malakia, when used in moral contexts, means dissolute and occasionally refers to sexual activity but never to homosexual acts. There are at least five Greek words that specifically mean people who practice same-gender sex. Unquestionably, if Paul had meant such people, he would not have used a word that is never used to mean that in Greek writings when he had other words that were clear in that meaning. He must have meant what the word commonly means in moral contexts, “morally weak.” There is no justification, most scholars agree, for translating it “homosexuals.”
Arsenokoitai, is not found in any extant Greek writings until the second century when it apparently means “pederast”, a corrupter of boys, and the sixth century when it is used for husbands practicing anal intercourse with their wives. Again, if Paul meant people practicing same-gender sex, why didn’t he use one of the common words? Some scholars think probably the second century use might come closest to Paul’s intention. If so, there is no justification for translating the word as “homosexuals.” Other scholars see a connection with Greek words used to refer to same-gender sex in Leviticus. If so, it is speaking of heterosexuals given to such lust they turn to such acts.
Richard Hays tells us, “I Corinthians 6:9-11 states no rule to govern the conduct of Christians.”B-7
One commentator has another reason for rejecting the NIV and original RSV translations, “homosexuals.” Today it could mean that a person who is homosexual in orientation even though “of irreproachable morals, is automatically branded as unrighteous and excluded from the kingdom of God, just as if he were the most depraved of sexual perverts.”B-8
So I Cor. 6:9 says nothing about homosexuality with the possible exception of condemnable pederasty.”