the Bible is sometimes misused when it comes to deciding how individuals and communities should act. There are a lot of myths and misconceptions about what the Bible says and doesn't say ... So the Bible is used to justify opposition to same-sex marriage and yet people also quote the Bible to defend it.
Having studied the Bible, and paying a lot of attention to this area, Michael Coogan has interesting insights of the Song of Songs (sometimes desperately re-interpretted as an allegory of God/Israel), homosexuality in biblical times, and how little Jesus says about sex, "except when it comes to issues like adultery and divorce."
Jesus has a lot of good things to say, but sex doesn't seem to be very high on his list of things to be avoided. He's more concerned about interpersonal relationships and social justice and issues like that.
In what might be an afront to some churchgoers, Coogan says
I don't think one needs to necessarily justify one's beliefs or one's actions exclusively on what the Bible says
He points out the range of practices in the Bible that we no longer accept as valid - that children who curse their parents, all prostitutes, or adulterers, should all be put to death. Not to mention polygamy, slavery and treating women as possessions of men. So what role does the Bible play?
what is inspired about the Bible is not the individual passages, the individual verses which come from particular times, from particular writers with their own values, but rather in a sense the underlying message. And that message in Jewish and Christian tradition is a message of love of neighbour, of equal treatment of all persons.
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