Homosexual Sues God

I'm not quite sure what to make of this. The lawsuit has been filed. Personally I think Fowler offers an interesting argument according to USA Today:

,,,referring to homosexuality as a sin have made him an outcast from his family and contributed to physical discomfort and periods of "demoralization, chaos and bewilderment."

The intent of the publisher was to design a religious, sacred document to reflect an individual opinion or a group's conclusion to cause "me or anyone who is a homosexual to endure verbal abuse, discrimination, episodes of hate, and physical violence ... including murder," Fowler wrote.

You see, 1 Corinthians 6:9 presents a very interesting conundrum in regards to interpretational history of the Greek malakoi (and arsenokoites). 

For the most part if one studies the history of how the word has been translated throughout history going all the way back to Tyndales 1526 version, it was first translated as "weakling".  In 1609, starting with the Douay-Rheims, it "changed" to effeminate.  Early 20th century, a meaning of male prostitution was adopted (in reference to the shrine prostitution).

It wasn't until the McCarthy era of the 50s that words such as "sexual pervert" or "guilty of homosexual perversion" was adopted.  And this point is important, it was cultural factors that influenced modern translators to inject anti-gay bias into their translation.  But it wasn't until the early to mid 2000s that the word "homosexual" in the derogatory sense was fully adopted.

(Conservative) Translators, and their publishers, are imposing a 20th-21st century cultural meaning on a "word" (text) written in the 1st century. And that is not even taking into account the grammatical issues of the Greek language at the time of Paul's writings. 

Another issue that are often overlooked by modern day agenda driven translators, the use of malakoi in antiquity.  In other words -Plato, Aristotle and Josephus to name a few - malakoi meant soft or weak.  Then there is the  cultural issues, as well as the vice lists.  (I have addressed shrine prostitution elsewhere, but that also needs consideration as well.)

As for arsenokoites, let's just say that Paul was the first to use this term, "a composite word, made up from two previously existing words that do not seem to have been put together before in Greek literature."  In antiquity it was again used only in reference to the "vice lists,"

So to borrow from David Gushee:

Clear yet?

How might the history of Christian treatment of gays and lesbians have been different if arsenokoitai had been translated “sex traffickers” or “sexual exploiters” or "rapists" or "sexual predators" or “pimps”? Such translations are plausible, even if not the majority scholarly reconstruction at this time. And they are at least as adequate, or inadequate, as “homosexual,” a term from our culture with a range of meanings including sexual orientation, identity, and activity, and not a word from Paul’s world.

It might have been nice if in our English Bibles the genuine uncertainty about how to translate Paul's neologism arsenokoitai, or the two words malakoi and arsenokoitai together, at least had been mentioned in a footnote.

But alas — most of the translations we got read as if every "homosexual" person was being condemned — to eternal fire. This overly confident translation decision then shadowed the lives of all LGBT people, most sadly gay and lesbian adolescents rejected by their mothers and fathers (and pastors and youth ministers) as hell-bound perverts. 

Very high-level scholarly uncertainty about the meaning and translation of these two Greek words, exacerbated by profound cultural and linguistic differences between what we (think we) know about Paul's world and what we do know about our own, undermines claims to the conclusiveness of malakoi and arsenokoitai for resolving the LGBT issue.

I deeply lament the damage done by certain questionable and sometimes crudely derogatory Bible translations in the lives of vulnerable people made in God's image.

And that my dear readers is why - as odd as Fowler's lawsuit appears - Bill Muehlenbergher may be eating his words, "Don’t like what the Bible says? No probs, just sue the publishers. Silence all opposition and stamp under foot any contrary points of view. And of course all this homofascism and pink tyranny is being done in the name of tolerance, diversity and acceptance."

Well sir, maybe if the translators and publisher's actually did their jobs and presented a well rounded translation we wouldn't be having this issue. (Ignoring the the fact that - uh, god doesn't exist.)

And that is just what we find. An American guy is not quite suing God, but the next best thing: he is suing God’s Word. Yep a homosexual is suing the Bible. And it is not hard to imagine why. Here is how one article on this begins:

A homosexual man is suing a third national Bible publisher for “mental anguish” after he says the company published Bibles with a negative connotation toward homosexuals. Bradley LaShawn Fowler of Canton, Mich., alleges Tyndale House Publishers manipulated Scripture when it published Tyndale’s New Living Translation Holy Bible and the New Life Application Study Bible by using the term “homosexuals” in a New Testament passage, 1 Corinthians 6:9….

As WND reported, Fowler, who had a blog on Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign website last year, filed his initial complaint against Christian publishers Zondervan and Thomas Nelson Publishing. Fowler, who represented himself in both lawsuits, said in his complaint against Zondervan that the publisher intended to design a religious, sacred document to reflect an individual opinion or a group’s conclusion to cause “me or anyone who is a homosexual to endure verbal abuse, discrimination, episodes of hate, and physical violence … including murder.” He told the Grand Rapids’ WOOD-TV in 2008 that he wants to “compensate for the past 20 years of emotional duress and mental instability.”

Well, he got the ‘mental instability’ part right at least. This guy is a real nut job. This is just one big sick joke. Unfortunately however the mindset behind this is becoming more common and more serious. For years now the militant homosexual activists have been claiming that the Bible is a book full of “hate speech”.

Homosexual Sues God