We should be careful about
what we claim ‘the Bible says’

Frequently, religious debaters throw around clichés like hand grenades, wounding each other, innocent bystanders and budgets. The author of James 3:8-9 was right. “The tongue is restless and evil, full of poison,” he said.
One of the most toxic clichés that flows off our tongues is “the Bible says.” It’s bad dogma.
“The Bible says” is a hardball we pitch to brain someone. Is there any wonder we helmet our minds each time we come to bat? As “a people of the book” (another dogma/cliché), we think whatever “the Bible says” is true.
Sometimes it is not. Or at least, our interpretation is not.
In practice, we are not “a people of the book.” We are ”a people who interpret the book.” For example, in various ways, the Bible says:
> Women should be subordinate to men.
> Mental illness is caused by demons.
> The world is flat.
> Believers can play with snakes, drink poison, walk on water and throw mountains into the sea.
Those are among a long list of things we don’t practice because they have either been proved wrong, dangerous or inconsistent by evidence outside the texts.
We must confess that rational people don’t practice what they say they believe even if they say “what the Bible says” is true.
What is most true—and the way rational people behave—is to interpret the Bible based on the preponderance of the evidence outside the text.
In our discourses on homosexuality, we, “a people of the book,” must finally confess that using “the Bible says” as a platform for peace and joy is (as my middle school friends say) bogus.
Fortunately, after about five decades of valid research in the fields of sexual orientation, the sciences, such as genetics, neurology, sexology, sociology, psychology and biology, can now provide us with some dominant and conclusive evidences:
> There is no scientific evidence that sexual orientations can be changed by the way people are reared, by contagion or by seduction.
> Genetics determines less than half of the variations in sexual orientation. Hormones and their directive enzymes produce the greater, prenatal influence.
> Intersexual markers, such as finger length, voice control, growth patterns, handedness, and other physical anomalies, point to a similar prenatal origin of sexual orientation.
> The brain structure of homosexual people seems to be “cross-shifted” from their sexual body identity.
> Sexual orientation, hetero- or homo-, is fixed, even when sexual behavior is changed.
> Sexual orientation is best defined in complex terms beyond the scope of sexual behaviors.
These are the kinds of contemporary evidences beyond what “the Bible says” concerning homosexual morality upon which reasonable United Methodist will correctly interpret the Bible, as we almost always do.
Until such time, I suspect, we will continue beaning each other in Bible ball.