Of course, there are things worse than ...

Shrimp here: I haven't explained in a while why this is called Shellfish. No, it's not because I am a cute crustacean. It's in honor of the "silly shellfish argument," which the highest profile one you ion the ELCA have had was when PB Hanson asked Ralph Klein to the mike in the heat of Rec 3. Anyway, it's about time...

[sirens in the background, lights flashing, 'Incoming.']

Shellfish alert! Just discovered over at US News and World Report, an interview with archfiend Shhhhelby Spong:

Q. What does the Bible say about homosexuality?

A. There are nine passages in the Bible dealing with homosexuality. Leviticus 18 and 20 say a man who lies with a man as with a woman is an abomination and both shall be put to death. If you're going to cite that, you should read all of Leviticus. It also says if you talk back to your parents, you should be put to death. If you cuss, don't observe the Sabbath, or worship false gods, you should be put to death. Even people in the right wing like the Jerry Falwells and Jim Dobsons, they can be pretty vicious, but I don't know anybody who would call for an execution of homosexuals.


See, humans? Perfect sense. Ignore all of the Bible's clear teaching because of stoning. Now, that's the shellfish argument to a "t."

In its stupidest form, it is "We eat shrimp, right?" To the uninitiated, they can barely help turning red and sputtering as they think "This person is really comparing adulterous penetration of , oh, no, stop, to eating shrimp?"

Yet, this is the SAME logic as was endorsed by Klein, Hanson, the Sexualtiy Task Force, probably your bishop and your neighboring ELCA pastor, if not you or your own.

Anyway, I refuse. It's stupid. Be sure to be familiar with how to respond. As William Witt notes :

"Biblical interpreters understood that other biblical material besides the Ten
Commandments contains moral law: the creation narratives of Genesis 1 and 2, other Mosaic material, the Wisdom literature, the Psalms, the Prophets, and, of course, New Testament material, including the Sermon on the Mount and the moral expositions in the Epistles. When Haller states that because the biblical prohibitions against same-sex activity are not part of the Ten Commandments, "they are precisely the sort of law the church has the power to reject or enforce as it sees fit," he has it exactly backward. Because these prohibitions are part of the moral material of the Old Testament that is summed up in the Ten Commandments, and endorsed again in the New Testament with no qualifications and no exceptions, they are precisely the sorts of law the Church has never felt itself free to reject or enforce as it sees fit."