Why?

It was long, said Susan—over an hour long. But it was worth it, she said; she also said that most of the people who needed to hear it would be turned off in the first ten minutes.

I only made it halfway through….

And no, the problem wasn’t the length; the problem was the speaker, Matthew Vines. He’s 22, good-looking, articulate, thoughtful and…

…heartbreaking.

Why? Well, he has gone on a two-year quest to reconcile his—OK, our—homosexuality with the Bible. So that meant taking two years off from school—which happens to be Harvard—to read the Bible and study what biblical scholars have said, and are saying, about the Bible.

Why do all this? Because he’s a native of Wichita, Kansas, and was raised in a good Christian home. Oh, and apparently nobody was talking about homosexuality—either at home or at church. And there didn’t seem to be many gay people about, from his description; it was quite 1950’s….

OK—that’s the first problem. I am 57, Vines in 22—when I was his age, the year was 1978. Stonewall took place in 1969, and all throughout the ‘70’s the gay movement was emerging and then growing. And you’re telling me there are no gay people in Kansas in 2013? I looked it up—Wichita has 380,000 people, and is the 49^th largest city in the US. And not one of those 380,000 people is gay?

It may be that this is something that we—who have come out to our families and our bosses and to the world in general—need to remember. There are a lot of people who have never met a gay person—though they’ve met many a closeted homosexual. And there are a lot of places where being gay is…well, almost not an option.

And Wichita may be one of those places; here’s what the Wikipedia article said on Vines:

After accepting defeat in his attempt to convince his family's local church leadership that they misunderstood what the Bible states about homosexuality,[4] Matthew and his parents decided to cease their membership. Matthew reportedly is Presbyterian.[5]

Right—so that wouldn’t be a problem for me; I would have given the church “leadership” a pronated middle finger and hopped back to Harvard. But for Vines—and for many, many other gay people raised in very religious households—that wasn’t and isn’t an option. Another thing for jaded, out gay people to remember.

So Vines spent two years reading and writing, and eventually delivered the hour-long talk below. And what’s the focus? Explaining the six references to homosexuality in the Bible, and then arguing that “the Bible never directly addresses and certainly does not condemn, loving, committed same-sex relationships."

There are moving moments in the talk; as you can see in this quote from The New York Times:

“Falling in love is one of the worst things that could happen to a gay person,” Mr. Vines says early in the video, “because you will necessarily be heartbroken, you will have to run away, and that will happen every single time that you come to care about someone else too much.”

Vines then tackles the six references to homosexuality in the Bible—and that’s when it was over for me. Because we start out with the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, and then have this, from Genesis 19, about Lot and the two angels disguised as men:

But he insisted so strongly that they did go with him and entered his house. He prepared a meal for them, baking bread without yeast, and they ate. 4 Before they had gone to bed, all the men from every part of the city of Sodom—both young and old—surrounded the house. 5 They called to Lot, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with them.”

6 Lot went outside to meet them and shut the door behind him 7 and said, “No, my friends. Don’t do this wicked thing. 8 Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a man. Let me bring them out to you, and you can do what you like with them. But don’t do anything to these men, for they have come under the protection of my roof.”

Vines gets down to work, busy to explain why the passage is not a condemnation of homosexuality. And here I confess—I listened, understood, and accepted the validity of Vines’ argument. I also thought it was completely crazy. Why?

Because in the entire argument, Vines never takes on what seemed to me the most outrageous part of the tale: a father perfectly prepared to throw two of his daughters to the dogs disguised as men, rather than two male strangers. Oh—strangers who are “angels” and are not on record for saying, “what the fuh, dude? You’d do that to your daughters? No friggin’ way!” and turning him to stone. (Right—I just reread the thing, and it’s possible the angels, inside, didn’t hear Lot, outside. But still….)

Look—if we are attempting to derive a moral code from this story, and if this story is indicative of the rest of the damn Bible, we’re screwed. Because as someone put it recently, the God of the Old Testament is in a really terrible mood most of the time.

The New Testament is supposed to be better—but can’t we just say it? The Bible is a morass of conflicting texts and messages written decades after the death of Jesus (in the case of the New Testament). It can be and is cherry-picked to anyone’s liking.

Vines is 22, and has spent two years of his time on this project; he has set up an organization, The Reformation Project, to attempt to change mainstream Christian churches to become more open to gay people. Had he stayed in Harvard, he would probably be graduating in six months. Instead, he has a book coming out early next year, and has created the viral YouTube video below. He’s never had a boyfriend, and wants to save himself sexually for his future husband.

Early in the 2008 Democratic Party campaign, I remember hearing a debate of democratic candidates, all of whom were asked by a member of the audience: Do you believe that every word of the Bible is true? And will you say so publicly?” “

It was delicious; it was ridiculous. The politicians weaseled—nor was it good enough to say that the Bible was the most important, the most meaningful, had been the lifeline when I was sinking in sin and despair…. No, that man wanted to know: WILL YOU TELL THE AMERICAN PEOPLE THAT EVERY WORD IN THE BIBLE IS TRUE!

They caved, of course. They had to. And so all these intelligent, bright guys with their legal degrees from Harvard and Yale looked the man right in the eye and avowed, yes—every word in the Bible was true.

My problem? When are we ever going to stop being nuts? I don’t want to go all Dawkins—there’s a lot of good stuff, like the beatitudes and the whole life of Jesus, in the Bible. But there’s a lot of bunkum, too.

And why do we have to pretend there’s not?

And why does a bright, earnest kid have to take two years out of his life in his twenties, to wrestle with the Bible, to take passages and turn, twist, explain? I looked at him as I would one of my children, and…

…my heart broke.