Pat Robertson Lies About the Bible To Scare You About Gay Marriage!

"We haven’t taken this to its ultimate conclusion. You got polygamy out there. How can we rule that polygamy is illegal when you say that homosexual marriage is legal. What is it about polygamy that’s different? Well, polygamy was outlawed because it was considered immoral according to biblical standards. But if we take biblical standards away in homosexuality, what about the other? And what about bestiality and ultimately what about child molestation and pedophilia? How can we criminalize these things and at the same time have constitutional amendments allowing same-sex marriage among homosexuals. You mark my words, this is just the beginning in a long downward slide in relation to all the things that we consider to be abhorrent."

Hey, Pat Robertson is lying about the Bible! That’s gotta be a sin, right? Let’s take a look at the lies!

First, polygamy was not outlawed because it was considered immoral by biblical standards. There is not one sentence in the Bible condemning polygamy. While the Bible has rules for everything from planting crops to what clothes to wear and rules on marriage, nowhere does God or a Prophet or Jesus or an Apostle ever say anything like “Thou shall not take more than one wife.” Never. Several heroes of the Bible had multiple wives, David & Solomon, for instance. In fact, in 2 Samuel 12:8, we are told that God gave David his wives. If it is a sin to have multiple wives, why would God give multiple wives to David? The arguments that Christians use to say that the Bible is against polygamy (an argument they made only after polygamy went out of style) are:

1.  The Bible frequently speaks of a husband and wife without using the plural, which doesn’t really say much given that it also frequently refers to husbands with multiple wives.

2.  Multiple wives are sometimes shown as causing problems in Biblical stories; however, they aren’t always. For instance, the first mention of polygamy is in Genesis 4:19: “Lamech married two women.” And that’s about it. No suggestion that anything was done wrong or that any problems arose from this polygamous marriage.

3.  In the New Testament, 1 Timothy 3:2, 12 and Titus 1:6 give “the husband of one wife” in a list of qualifications for spiritual leadership. But it doesn’t say that having more than one wife is a sin. Still some have read this to mean the following:

While these qualifications are specifically for positions of spiritual leadership, they should apply equally to all Christians. Should not all Christians be “above reproach ... temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not given to drunkenness, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money” (1 Timothy 3:2-4)? If we are called to be holy (1 Peter 1:16), and if these standards are holy for elders and deacons, then they are holy for all.

That doesn’t really hold water. Both St. Paul (I Cor. 7: 1-11) and Jesus said it was better not to marry at all (Matt 19: 10-12)! So the idea that the Bible can be seen as anti-polygamy from 1 Timothy 3:2, 12 and Titus 1:6 doesn’t really hold water unless we also say the Bible is anti-marriage because of I Cor. 7: 1-11 and Matt 19: 10-12!

In short, the arguments are bullshit.

The second lie is that there is some biblical law against child molestation and pedophilia. Again, there is not one sentence in the Bible saying that children should not be one’s sex partners. Nowhere does the Bible set a minimum age for sex or a biological minimum (i.e. after puberty). As for “molestation,” let’s note that the Bible had no problem with selling children into sexual slavery (Ex. 25: 2-11) and Moses (Num. 31) had no problem telling his soldiers to kill all their male captives (i.e. little boys) and non-virgin women while handing over the virgin girls over to them as sex slaves. Interesting fun fact: Moses was prevented from entering into the Promised Land as a punishment from God because Moses hit a rock to make water come out of it instead of speaking to the rock as God commanded, not because he order the murder of innocent women and boys or handed virgin girls over to their families’ murderers as sex slaves. Yeah, I’m guessing that the prevention of the molestation of children was not the highest priority of the Bible.

So let’s recap. The Bible had no problem with polygamy or child molestation or pedophilia. It is kind of anti-marriage if Jesus and St. Paul are to be taken at their word. But Pat Robertson suggests that if you take biblical principles out of marriage, people will be screwing goats. And that, dear reader, is why Pat Robertson is a lying fear-monger.