FEBRUARY 1981 HIGH GEAR Page 7

Big Daddy Satan's new dildo

seem to have regarded the sinfulness of homosexuality as being significant enough to menwhen he had any urgent moral or religious matters to

By R. Woodward Satan has often been called Father of Lies, and among his dearest children are pious-tion sounding anti-gay commentar-

ies. These commentaries are his illegitimate, surrogate offspring, conceived as a result of his having successfully persuaded socalled religious writers to rape

the Bible.

The fact that these offspring usually come out stillborn and grotesquely misshapen makes them all the more effective in their intended capacity, which is to serve as handy dildoes to be used by Satan and his representatives in viclating the souls of

true believers.

How Jerry Falwell deals with gay men and women in his new book Listen, Americal, how he functions as a morally and spiritually obtuse representative of moral and spiritual impotence, is yet another evangelical travesty on Rosemary's Baby.

Falwell tries to be a smoothie, and he uses a manner less overtly brutal than that of many other anti-gay preachers in mishandling holy writ and in misleading his readers. Quite obviously, however, what Falwell is trying to do to people he is trying to do without anybody's informed

consent.

Rape does not always involve being battered or tied up. Some people prefer to take advantage of you when they can find you asleep or put you to sleep.

One way that Falwell tries to keep your soul from being awake and vigilant while reading Listen, America! is to try to distract you from using your sense of proportion in weighing his arguments.

Bible-quoting preachers like Falwell, who make homosexuality out to be some grave and important sin, all face the same big embarrassment, which they hope you won't notice (those Bible-quoting anti-gay preachers, that is, who are not too simple to be embarrassed by anything).

Homosexuality is hardly mentioned at all in the New Testament, and then, only in passing, in the middle of general discus-

discuss.

Falwell, in his chapter in Listen, America! entitled "Homosexuality," mentions three instances of words of Paul which refer to homosexuality; Romans 1:26-28, I Corinthians 6: 9, 10, and I Timothy 1:9. He precedes citing these passages by saying that New Testament references to homosexuality "include" them, obviously trying to give you the impression that he is giving you a selection of references to homosexuality in the New Testament, when, in fact, these three bits of wording are all of the references to homosexuality in the New Testament.

It is no great surprise that Falwell never bothers to mention that there is no statement any where in the New Testament that human sexuality is exclusively, or even mainly, for procreation. Falwell's mendacity in this chapter is equaled only by his pathetic lack of inventiveness. Hepads out the chapter with very general Biblical quotations, such as Paul's words in I Corinthians, 16: 13, "Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men." He does not seem to have considered that citing just about any passage in the Bible as an indirect reference to homosexuality might be regarded less as prov⚫ ing the soundness and depth of his insights than as advertising his special pleading and the intensity of his hang-ups.

Despite the fact that such padding takes up two-thirds of the chapter, the chapter Falwell has managed to produce is only six pages long. (Pages 181-186).

Falwell's book has 266 pages of text. With citing passages from the New and Old Testaments directly relevant to discussing homosexuality, and with giving his comments on these citations, Falwell is able to fill less than two pages.

Later on in the book, nonetheless, on page 253, he names homosexuality as being on of the five great problems "that moral Americans need to be ready to face." means of facing them including political activity under the guidance of people like Falwell. (The other four problems named are abortion, "humanism," and the fractured family).

Falwell seems to be a great deal less interested in proving any actual danger from homo-

sexuality to the moral and spiritual well being of most Americans, than he is in exploiting its and of itself, has little relevance publicity value. A red cloth, in to the ultimate well being of a bull, but a person clever at waving it can get the bull to charge in

some chosen direction. (Those ioyai American citizens of Japanese ancestory who ended up in War I can at least be grateful that government camps during World Falwell was not old enough in 1942 to help Americans remember Pearl Harbor).

Falwell's arrangement of his two pages of relevant material is red cloth, as well as a classic a classic example of waving the example of staying barely within the letter of the New Testament while violating its spirit.

At the bottom of page 181 he does say about Old Testament rules, "We are no longer under that law because of Christ's sacrificial death on the cross." But he only says this, as a paren-

thetical comment, right after Enthralled by idle superstition, anti-gay types insist that you must be a toad because they happen to be covered with warts.

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sive amount of plain evidence. Matters like adultery and bearing false witness, by contrast, are brought up so many times by Jesus and Paul, in so many different contexts, that you can be more sure that Jesus and Paul regarded these two things as being grave sins than you can be of most things in all of world literature.

In presenting the words, ideas, and actions of Jesus, the New Testament neither quotes nor depicts Jesus as ever having mentioned the subject of homosexuality at all. Whether or not Jesus is likely to have regarded homosexual acts per se as being sinful, he obviously does not

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quoting for emotional effect the In the second paragraph, just harsh Old Testament words of before the Leviticus quotation, Leviticus 20:13, "If a man lie also he says that Sodom and Gomorwith mankind, as he lieth with a rah were destroyed because "the woman, both of them have comsin of homosexuality is so griemitted an abomination. They vous, so abominable in the sight shall surely be put to death." This of God." Like most Biblical is not unlike quietly whispering, commentators of his ilk, Falwell "Jesus says you don't really have does not bother to mention that to." right after yelling to an excitthe men of Sodom tried to rape able mob. "Put the nooses angels of God who were under around their necks!" their protection as guests. (Genesis 19 only takes a couple of minutes to read through. See for yourself where the emphasis is).

The chapter opens with the statement that until a few years ago "homosexual" was a word "that represented the zenith of human indecency," which is followed by the sentence, "Without exception this was a word that was spoken in contempt."

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After his generous mention that Christians live under the New Testament, Falwell quotes (Continued on the next page)

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