If Biblical teaching is supreme and unquestionable, where are those who lived before it was introduced?

Is “Morality” Bigotry’s Trojan Horse?

You have no doubt heard countless commentators condemning gay lifestyles as immoral because the Bible or Koran says so. They routinely expound an illiberal argument whose real intention must be to dictate people’s lives and beliefs on the basis of mythical religious concepts. Yet, religion is as subjective as it is based purely on superstition which one either believes or doesn’t. There is quite simply no evidence that non-believers go to an entirely different afterlife than believers so one is always lost when one hears anyone pronouncing where the “sinners” are heading.

Doctrinaire religious zealots make the same mistake when they aver that Catholic doctrine or Islamic teaching cannot be questioned. A one Timothy Kalyegira (New Vision May 16, 2005) once went to the extent of announcing that anyone who questioned the Biblical word was “crazy.” So, despite the fact that Jesus, on whose teachings Catholicism is based, never mentioned abortion or homosexuality, Kalyegira lumped all these into one “evil” and branded anyone who doesn’t share his moral indignation against them “crazy.” Perhaps Kalyegira was loosely borrowing from Pope Benedict XVI who once said that that Christianity:

“… is a revelation; it is a message that has been consigned to us, and we have no right to reconstruct it as we like or choose.”

Like Pope Benedict XVI (he was called Cardinal Rantziger when he made the above proclamation) Kalyegira, too, seemed to be saying that ordinary people are too foolish to understand Christian orthodoxy so they should leave it to the Popes and great thinkers like Kalyegira to interpret. After all, this school of thought prefers to see religion as dogma that excludes all rational thought.

Yet, even the Catholic Church (On the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons, 1986) admits that there are gay people that are involuntarily so, a deviation surely from the “all homosexuals are evil” refrain. Else, if someone is born gay, is that to say that they were born evil? The Vatican Encyclical steadfastly refers to homosexuals as intrinsically evil, but it conveniently omits to explain how people who are gay through no fault of their own are evil. And what then are we to make of the teaching (Genesis 1:27) that all human beings were made in the image of God?

Mind you this is the same Vatican that not only turned a blind eye to, but also actively covered up evidence of priests accused of molesting young boys. Many of the claims were eventually authenticated despite protracted obstructionism from the Vatican and the rest of the Church hierarchy. Apparently, Kalyegira would rather that we all just swallow “hook, line and sinker” without questioning even in the light of such unmitigated dereliction of duty by an institution that shirked its primary responsibility which is protecting the vulnerable from criminals.

The supremacy of the Bible (and other religious books written by man) is the basis of most of the moral indignation against homosexuality and prostitution. But then, rather strangely, the same people that tell you that their indignation has its roots in religion are usually the same ones that also say that homosexuality is against African morals and/or is a Western import into what, to them, were once morally superior cultures. This thinking overlooks obvious evidence of illicit sex in many African communities, brothels in Ethiopia as far back as 700 AD, in a country that was never colonized. They ignore the pernicious problems such as the marrying off of pre-teenage and teenage girls to dirty old men (we now call that child abuse), of married women being returned to their birth homes because they were “sterile,” of female circumcision (female genital mutilation) which is now abandoned in all but the most stubbornly foolish cultural outposts. Does the Bible say anything about female genital mutilation? And can one even begin to compare any of these erstwhile “African morals” to consensual sex for money and same sex relationships?

Yes, black Africa has borrowed from the West and mostly good things; education which every government lauds as the bedrock of emancipation and enlightenment, freedom for men and women to choose their sexual partners, running tap water to ease the burden of those going to the water wells and so on. But let us be clear: there is nothing terribly special about African cultures in comparison to other civilizations and, in fact, there is a lot to be said for discarding tribal African rituals such as virginity arbiters on the wedding night and the lynching of “witches.” As for always trawling out the Bible, Koran or whatever other religious text to justify morality or lack thereof, unless those who believe in nothing else but these books are saying that our forefathers who lived before they were introduced are all in hell, there is something to be said for some humility and perspective where quoting from imported religious books is concerned.