Actually caring for other human beings, ALL humans (and how about animals too?) is less important than following some nonsensical and heartless rules that will supposedly guarantee a pleasant afterlife. These people are so scared that a big, bad daddy god will come and get them someday, that they won’t allow themselves to consider other ideas - any idea that contradicts what they want to believe is “dangerous”, being a humanist is a bad thing, saying certain words - aka swears - is a “sin”, and certain numbers like 666 are magical. If there weren’t so many of them, they’d be in mental health clinics right now, not running our schools and government.

A comprehensive study of world history, including women’s history and an objective timeline of the invention of Christianity, should be required starting in grade school. Not this lopsided view of history that’s doled out in churches by people who aren’t even qualified.

It amazes me sometimes, how little the things I think of as basic modern knowledge hav trickled into the mainstream. The realization that there is no one fixed eternal tradition of marriage, for starters, but many more too . . . There was a NY Times editorial the other day that took a random&irrelevent potshot at Ebonics, screeching at how misguided teachers had wanted to teach street slang (no, Ebonics was pop for African American Vernacular English, identified by linguists as a distinct, regular, rule governed variety among other varities that make up English) and even thought that it was as good as real English!!! (is British English “as good as” American English?)

I hope that in a hundred years arguments against SSM seem as wacky as that…

Moses married a Cushite, and Cush is traditionally somewhere in Africa (most commonly Ethiopia but some argue northern Egypt, IIRC). Miriam and Aaron are scolded for condemning that marriage, so I’d think interracial marriage is specifically approved in the Bible.

According to this, iriam made some less than appropriate comments about her sister-in-law’s skin color and was afflicted with a skin condition as punishment for her evil tongue & judgements

The book itself is riddled with contradictions, inconsistencies and nonsensical sections, and it’s vagueness allows those that wish to justify whatever way they think to be the right way to think.

Don’t get me started on my gripes about the contradictions and fabrications in that thing =) The bible itself is what finally pushed me to leave my church - as if the sexism and homophobia there weren’t enough. Reading the bible’s supposed to strengthen your faith, or so they’d have you believe. But you really have to tell yourself a lot of lies and make a lot of excuses to keep believing in it day after day. I just couldn’t keep doing that after awhile. I think it was the law about women marrying their rapists that broke the last straw.

The thing that you have to realise hon is that there doesn’t have to be anything in the bible to ban interracial marriage. People with bigotries will always find and interpret gospel in such a way that it justifies their own bigotries.

I know. Believe me, I know. It’s their rules and they change them as it suits them. Fighting them on their own turf doesn’t work. Still, knowledge is power, right?

1 King Solomon, however, loved many foreign women besides Pharaoh’s daughter…Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians and Hittites. 2 They were from nations about which the LORD had told the Israelites, “You must not intermarry with them, because they will surely turn your hearts after their gods.”

Okay, so maybe it was religion, but it was admonished about foreigners. So, there’s your argument against inter-racial marriages. (Or at least, argument about inter-religious marriage)

is there anything in the Bible that could be interpreted as opposing inter-racial marriage?

The thing that you have to realise hon is that there doesn’t have to be anything in the bible to ban interracial marriage. People with bigotries will always find and interpret gospel in such a way that it justifies their own bigotries (I won’t go into my own opinions about the bible itself though *smile*). After all the White Power Churches argue strenuously that there are pieces therein that proclaim them as right.

I’ve seen some really nice editorials, articles and opinion pieces that took the majorly quoted tenants ‘against’ everything queer in the bible where they are shown to really speak nothing to how being gay today operates. I’m not going to say these versions trump those of the bigots, but it does show how to a certain extent you’ll find what you look for. That said, however, the interpretations of open-minded, tolerant and educated people do tend to have a little more credence in my mind :)

The book itself is riddled with contradictions, inconsistencies and nonsensical sections, and it’s vagueness allows those that wish to justify whatever way they think to be the right way to think.

Is there anything in the Bible that could be interpreted as opposing inter-racial marriage?

I’d say no - all the verses limiting spouse choice focus on belief systems. Even when peoples are discussed, members of those people marry into the Israelite tribe somewhere else and the marriage is approved (because the person marrying in embraced the Israelite belief system).

Moses married a Cushite, and Cush is traditionally somewhere in Africa (most commonly Ethiopia but some argue northern Egypt, IIRC). Miriam and Aaron are scolded for condemning that marriage, so I’d think interracial marriage is specifically approved in the Bible.

But when has reality of any kind ever slowed down bigotry? Whatever the culture values will be twisted into support, be it religion or science or medicine or magic.

The Old Testament is very tribal in places: you Israelites, keep yourselves separated from all the other tribes, and don’t intermarry, and sometimes you’re going to have to slaughter the other tribes, including women and children, otherwise you’ll all turn into idol-worshippers.

But it takes a very stretched, out-of-context argument to think, from that, that inter-racial marriage should be opposed. It often depends on some weird and baseless assumptions about the text.

Is there anything in the Bible that could be interpreted as opposing inter-racial marriage? I don’t know of any specifically, but racial bigots seem to think their opinion is morally based (and if Christian bigots aren’t getting their “morals” from the Bible, where?) They also seem to feel that their prohibitions against inter-racial marrage, SSM marriage, pre/extra martal sex, or even women being employed outside the home (my mother is against all these!) were all established at some distant point, at the dawn of time, and they needn’t cite even the bible as a source. The word “natural” usually crops up at some point.

It really p*sses me off when my mother says this stuff to my face, because I’m the one with an undergrad degree in history and - one would think - far better informed about the historical reality.