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If it was an honest offer, this would be the easiest five grand most
folks would ever make: An Alabama state representative has offered
$5,000 to anyone who can show that the Bible defines marriage as
being between a man and a woman. As it is, Alvin Holmes is offering
little more than a glimpse of his own deceit.
Associated Press reports that Holmes’ challenge came during a debate
in the Alabama House of Representatives over a state constitutional
amendment to ban same-sex marriage. He dramatically whipped $700
cash out of his pocket (a fair chunk of walking-around money by most
standards), then upped the ante after rejecting the flood of verses
that swamped his office.
AP reports the Alabama House received dozens of calls, which Holmes
dismissed as "broad answers dealing with morality." A House
stenographer took five pages of messages in one morning and told AP
"those are just the ones I've gotten to. I can only answer them one
at a time."
That’s good for her given the volume of verses on the topic. Tempted
as I am to bludgeon Rep. Holmes’ confusion into submission with a
score of quotes, one of the clearest is in Mathew 19:4-5, in which
Jesus says "Haven’t you read … that at the beginning the Creator
‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will
leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two
will become one flesh?’"
It doesn’t get plainer than that, but Holmes’ replied the Bible
doesn’t mean a wife has to be a woman. I’m not sure what else "male
and female" means in Holmes’ world, and if he has elaborated I’d
love to hear it. Heck, I’d love to print it.
1 Corinthians 7:2 (last Bible verse, I promise) says "But since
there is so much immorality, each man should have his own wife, and
each woman her own husband." Holmes told a local television station
"OK, but what that says (is) if two people should get married and if
they are of the same sex then he becomes his wife and he’s the
husband."
Trying to give Holmes the benefit of the doubt, I considered the
possibility that he might believe the Bible was written in English,
as there is no ambiguity in the original languages about what gender
husbands and wives are. A quick glance at my Webster’s New World
Dictionary brought that theory down with a thud, stating clearly
that wives are women and husbands are men, even in English.
So either Holmes isn’t reading the Bible in English – or Hebrew,
Greek, or Aramaic – or he has another agenda. He betrayed that in an
interview with the Montgomery Advertiser, claiming "Anybody could
have any interpretation they want of the Bible."
No, Rep. Holmes, anyone can lie but they can’t have any
interpretation of the Bible they want. Male means male, female means
female, husbands are men, and wives are women in any language in
which the Bible was written or Holmes was likely to have read.
My question for Rep. Holmes is the same I have for all who push this
"Bible says anything you want" gibberish: If you don’t believe the
Bible, why not just say so? Why not deny its relevance or simply
ignore it? Why engage in linguistic contortions, and, in the
case of Rep. Holmes, confirm what most people think of politicians’
honesty anyway?
Unfortunately many who have not read the Bible will hear news
stories about Holmes’ babble and believe it. It will become an urban
legend, more gospel for the church of what’s happening now. If that
is to be Rep. Holmes legislative legacy it is a sad one.
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