I think that the assholes should be allowed to make their arguments. They are flimsy at best and are pretty easy to knock down. We could start by sending Kuli as our representative. He's a Christian who actually understands that Christianity isn't about hate, but love.
There's a little-known tidbit that makes the real message quite clear: when you go through and look carefully, you find that Jesus taught nothing that wasn't in the Old Testament, especially the Prophets... except one thing. He distilled it all down to what God had been trying to get across all those centuries, and we find that here:
Love God with all you've got; love your neighbor as yourself.
That's his summary of the Old Testament, given in a way that says you don't actually need anything else. That's the first point (and they don't get it).
But the big point is this: that one new thing was
Love one another as I have loved you. That's a bombshell.
In all my years in all the churches I've been to, want to know how many times I've heard that preached on?
Two. Both in Lutheran churches, and both very, very scary sermons because by that standard every single claim we make to love anyone at all is called into question. And it's the standard the FRC and FotF and all the rest are missing: they measure their "love" for gays not by this standard, not even by the summation standard. but by (and God help us, I've actually heard this preached on WRT homosexuality) the example of Jehu, who invited all the wicked (Baal worshipers) to a party at a certain city -- then locked them in and sent soldiers in to kill them all. This gets linked to Jericho, where after the city was sacked, Joshua ordered it burned.
They call this love. Personally, I call it blasphemy, and I'll say it to their faces: they have taken the standard of Jesus, thrown it in the dirt, and taken up the standard of Jehu -- identified in the Bible as one who did not walk faithfully with God.
Use their own feeble arguments against them. For example, if the Constitution is inspired by God himself, why then did he not feel it important enough to inspire any mention of homosexuality? We'd tear them apart on debating points!
I haven't heard the Constitution called "inspired" often. "Ordained" isn't the same thing. It lands sort of somewhere between "handed down" and "approved", with the concept of "set in place" mixed in. For example, Paul could say that "all authority is ordained from God", when he was talking about the Roman Empire, yet at the same time the Temple is seen as ordained by God.
In the case of a new nation, though (especially when you want to think it was founded "in righteousness"), it's not hard to make the case that God made sure that
this supreme authority (i.e. Caesar) at least got from God, if not a "Brilliant!", then at least a, "That works".
WHAT?!
Yes, Christianity is supposed to be about love, forgiveness, compassion and all that sort of stuff. It's too bad that a lot of it's adherents don't subscribe to those tenets. They carry Bibles in their hands while they preach hate, intolerance, bigotry.
I have a friend who's hard core Southern Baptist and he's not one of those which is a good thing. He's a liberal Democrat, hates Fox "News" is pro-gay rights, pro-choice and all the other stuff liberals go for.
It's bigotry wrapped up in the American flag and Christianity.
They've never actually read their Bibles. To use one of their own phrases, they "mine" it -- trouble is, they're mining for things that tickle their 'fleshly' egos, things that affirm their desire to believe they're righteous. It's not about God, it's about them, using Him to elevate themselves in their own hearts and minds
It's actually not a surprising result from the Radical Reformation, which fed on "righteous zeal" to smash anything found offensive. What was the basis of what was offensive? Quite simply anything at all that jumped out of the Bible and they got enthusiastic over -- no actual study, no real reading, just a very immature grabbing at what titilated their urge to smash things.
In a way it's worse than bigotry; it's exactly what Jesus preached against, cast in the New Testament as the Pharisees: animal lusts cloaked in self-righteousness.
