Unfairness of Prop. 8

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To the Editor:

I am a local pastor and I have deep respect for the Bible. The words of Scripture help guide my life, and from them I receive inspiration and wisdom, which I do my best to articulate and share in a sermon each week.

I have been preaching biblical sermons as an ordained pastor now for 20 years, the last eight as the Pastor of the Community Presbyterian Church in downtown Pismo Beach. It deeply saddens me that some of my fellow Christians in San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties use the words of the Bible as a weapon to oppress some of our fellow Americans.

Gay and lesbian citizens serve our society as doctors, lawyers, teachers, police officers and firefighters, and many of them have lost their lives as soldiers in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention Vietnam and others. To use the Bible to justify discrimination against gay and lesbian men and women by backing the proposed marriage amendment is, I believe, a misuse of God’s sacred texts.

What most of these sincere Christians don’t reflect upon is that the Bible doesn’t say that homosexuals should not marry. It says literally that they all should be put to death. How convenient that our use of the homophobic texts in the Bible are so selective. I surmise that the death penalty for all homosexuals would not go over quite so easily, even in our most conservative churches.

In the past, the literal words of the Bible were used to justify the cruelty of slavery and the segregation of the races; the silencing of all women in the church and the society as inferior human beings; and to excuse the beating of children as a necessary discipline.

What did Jesus say about homosexuality? Nothing. But Jesus reportedly did say this about divorce: “Anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, and marries another woman, commits adultery.” The Bible’s punishment for adultery? Death by stoning. Shall we take that literally, too? Didn’t think so.

Please join me in voting against Proposition 8. It is unfair.

The Rev. Robert Crouch

Pismo Beach