HIGH GEAR PAGE 7

A book you may need

Christian duties and gay neighbors

by R. Woodward

Is the Homosexual My Neigh bor? Another Christian View by Letha Scanzoni and Virginia Ramey Mollenkott. Published by Harper & Row Publishers. 135 pages of text plus notes and index. Current price: $6.95.

With 1980 being an election year and right-wing yahoos claiming more and more that only they represent religion and morality, you may be needing ideas from the book Is the Homosexual My Neighbor? as a weapon for defending yourself.

Written in a clear and consice manner by two well known Christian writers Letha Scanzoni and Virginia Ramey Mollenkott, this book discusses how many "Christians" engaging in antigay activity are compromising the religion and morality that they claim to represent.

One thing the book's title refers to is the Commandment, "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor."

When the topic of homosexuality comes up, the writers argue, this Commandment is broken all too frequently by Christians who claim to be teaching other Christians what is right. The authors give many examples including several passages they quote directly from Christian literature.

Admitting that homosexuality is a difficult topic for many people to handle, the two writers argued that all too many Christians take the easiest way out. Not willing to regard homosexuality as a specific problem faced by specific individuals, such Christians only see it as some vaguely threatening, undefinable abstract evil, and they refuse to regard those who are homosexual as human beings.

The authors cite Jesus's story of the Good Samaritan which He told in response to the question, "Who is my neighbor?" One of the most important points of this story, the authors remind the reader, is that at the time Jesus was telling this story, Samaritans were an outside group feared and hated by most of Jesus's

listeners.

The lawyer who asked Jesus the question was obliged to admit that it was the Samaritan who helped the injured man lying by the road who was truly his neighbor rather than the priest and the Levite who walked right by him.

Those who are homosexual,

Peter is horrified and refuses even though the voice of the Lord gives the order twice again because most of the animals he sees are those strictly forbidden by the Leviticus Code as being unclean, as being those that "defile" the eater.

As Peter thinks about this vision, and he recalls the time he denied the Lord three times (Matthew 26: 33-35), he is told by a voice to go with some men who have been sent by God, to the house of a prominent Gentile to preach.

Peter realizes that what he has been told by this vision is that the Word of Christ is to be brought even to the Gentiles, even without their becoming strictly Kosher by following all of the regulations to be found in Leviticus. (Leviticus, to give a few examples, demands that all males be circumcised, forbids men to shave, forbids marital relations during the menstrual period, forbids the wearing of clothing made of combined fabrics, and forbids the eating of pork.)

Two passages in Leviticus (18:23 and 20:13), which are the only two passages in the Bible which clearly and directly single out for condemnation male homosexual acts per se, are frequently quoted by pork-eating Christians.

(One wonders if Anita Bryant had anything to say about gays to her clean-shaven husbnd in between bites of Easter ham.)

Implied in the discussion that the authors give of Law vs. Grace in the New Testament is the question, "If Gentiles had all been treated by the earliest Christians the way those who are homosexual are treated by many Christians today, where would all of these modern Christians be now?"

The book has a section entitled "What does the Bible Say?" which analyzes the passages in the Bible which refer to homosexual acts, and the writers point out that whenever homosexual acts are mentioned in the Bible, they are always mentioned in very negative contexts such as adultery, promiscuity, violence, or idolatry.

The homosexual activity described in Genesis 19, for example, after which Sodom and Gomorrah are destroyed, includes an attempt at gang rape which includes an attempt at having sex with angels which includes abuse of guests. If the angels had assumed female forms for their visit, the authors ask, would this have been enough of a reason to not have destroyed these two cities?

The authors point out, giving quotations, that other passages in the Bible which refer to the sinfulness of these two cities mention such sins as pride, inhospitality, and lusting after angels but they do not mention homosexuality per se.

The authors point out that the

Editorial

You can boycott

Summer is almost here and men and women who are gay should be giving some thought to last month's NOW decision as they plan their

vacations.

On April 1 the U.S. Court of Appeals in St. Louis ruled that the National Organization for Women is not violating anti-trust law by promoting an economic boycott of states that have not ratified the Equal Rights Amendment.

Said the court. "We hold that NOW's boycott activities are privileged on the basis of the First Amendment right to petition and the Supreme Court's recognition of that important right when it collided with commercial effects of trade restraints."

Those who are planning their vacations should consider avoiding states that still have on their books laws against sex acts between consenting adults.

Having such laws on the books indicates a certain stupidity on the part of a state government, that a majority of the state's legislators are only likely to understand obvious financial considerations.

Pointing out that it is the duty of American citizens, especially elected officials, to keep anything from interfering with the basic rights of all American citizens is an argument too idealistic and too abstract to have much effect on homophobic clods.

It is more effective to point out that it is a basic right of persons the authors suggest, are modern living in a free society to spend their money or not spend their money wherever they please. Anyone who opposes the right of any person or equivalents to Samaritans. group to boycott, to simply not buy something in a certain place, is easily seen as sabotaging the free enterprise system that so many politicians claim to cherish and protect.

The authors also suggest that the problem of how present-day Christians should deal with those who are homosexual is similar to the problem faced by the earliest Christians of how to deal with the Gentiles.

How to deal with the Gentiles was indicated to Peter in a vision described in Acts, Chapters 10 and 11. A great sheet full of animals descends from Heaven and a voice which Peter recognites as that of the Lord says, "Get up, Peter, Kill and Cat

Those who are gay have as much money to spend on travel and vacations as any other large group of individuals in the United States. Without gay money the tourist industries of many states would have severe pains in their pocketbooks.

These states, which have no laws against sex acts between consenting adults, should be considered first as places to spend your vacations: Alaska, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Indiana, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Nebraksa, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia, and Wyoming.

Why should your money go to places where you are not officially Welcome?" R. Woodward

idea of a permanent homosexual orientation or "condition" is never mentioned in the Bible at all because this idea has developed only recently. (Any word that could be literally translated

as "homosexual" does not appear in the Bible in the original languages because this word was coined less than a hundred

Editorial

(Continued on Page 8)

Ron Mottl's big lie

According to the Big Lie Theory, if you tell a big enough lie enough times, people will start to believe it.

The big lie that Congressman Ron Mottl is now helping to promote is the lie of "special consideration" for gays.

Mottl recently became a co-sponsor to House Concurrent Resolution 166. an anti-gay bill introduced in the House of Representatives last July by Representative Larry McDonald. (McDonald, a Georgia Democrat, is backed by the Christian Voice, an anti-gay lobby consisting of fundamentalists.)

H 166 would make it "the sense of the Congress of the United States that homosexual acts and the class of individuals who advocate such conduct shall never receive special consideration or a protected status under law"

The phrase special consideration" is being used here to cover up the fact that the chief purpose and aim of gay rights activities and gay rights legislation is the removing of special consideration so that gays are not deliberately deprived of ordinary consideration.

Not the least dishonest aspect of this bill is what seems to be the deliberate ambiguity of its phrasing.

The phrase "special consideration" can mean at least two different things. In the context of this bill it would seem to mean most obviously: some people being given something that other people are no! But it can also mean: some topic being given some special discussion because it is hard for most people to understand, or because most people know little about it and there is some need for them to learn more.

The sponsors of H 166 are not mentioning this second meaning at all right now (except probably among themselves), but this does not mean that they are not making plans to use it later. Mott and most of the other sponsors of this bill are lawyers, people who know what words mean and who manipulate the meanings of words all of the time.

The strategy of this bill's sponsors seems to be this: Play on the tendency that most people have to be somewhat envious of others: most of them will only take a brief glance, if any glance at all at the bill's wording, and most of them would not be likely to notice more than one meaning in the phrase "special consideration." If the support of these people gets the bill passed, then make every possible effort to interpret the phrase "special consideration" as meaning any consideration at all by the United States Congress. (Congresspersons like to think that any consideration they give to anything is special consideration.)

Besides the two meanings of the phrase "special consideration" there is another ambiguity in saying that "homosexual acts and the class of individuals who advocate them shall never receive special consideration or a protected status under law."

Why is the word "special" used only in front of the word "consideration" and not in front of "a protected status under law" as well? It would be all too easy for some quibbling anti-gay lawyer to argue later that "special" was not meant to apply to "a protected status under law." that a protected status means any protected status, that any persons who "advocate" homosexual acts (even those who do not actually engage in them) do not have the same protected status under

law as other American citizens.

The word "advocate is used in H 166 like it is usually used in anti-gay rhetoric, vaguely, and without expectation that people will bother to look up its meaning in a dictionary.

To advocate means to speak in behalf of a person or thing. The word 'advocate' as a noun is often used to mean a defense lawyer. Once again it is being suggested that gays do not have the right as other people do to defend themselves or to have anyone else speak in their behalf

In a purely legal sense, disregarding for a moment the question of what the legal rights of gays ought to be. H 166 is a bad piece of legislation. The basis for a good piece of legislation, for a good law, is that its wording be as clear and unambiguous as possible.

What H 166 means exactly is impossible to tell by reading it. Since it is only a few paragraphs long, and since it would be relatively easy for anyone involved with it to consider its wording very closely it would seem that either the ambiguity of it is deliberate or that those who wrote it introduced it, and are now sponsoring tore incompetent or perhaps the all shows both deliberate ambiguity and incompetence

With this bill, as with most anti-gay activity the presence of deliber ate evil would not preclude stupidity