are you suuuure you the meaning of the story of Sodom?

So on to my inspiration for starting making posts again.  On the issue of religious objections to homosexuality, the story of Sodom and Gomorrah is near and dear to many believer's hearts.  Of course it's popular to point out that the bible says homosexuality is an abomination, but the problem with that is that atheists read the bible too, and they found out that the bible also says shellfish are an abomination, as is wearing clothing made of mixed fabrics.  Yet you can readily see anti gay bigots wearing poly/cotton blends and eating at Red Lobster instead of picketing the place.

So yes, Sodom and Gomorrah seems to be a good story.  God smited two entire cities because of the icky buttsex.  Surely that shows that it grosses god out as much as it does nasty little bigots here on Earth.  Except apparently not.

I was originally linked to that video by a blogger who I tend to refer to as "the non evil evangelical" but perhaps I should just call him Fred Clark.  He reminded me of it in a blog post last Sunday.  Fred likes to post passages from the bible on Sundays, and while a lot of them tend to leave me cold this one interested me.  Go on, read it.  It's god lecturing the population of two cities about why he's unhappy with them.  He starts off by saying that making sacrifices to him isn't enough to make him happy, but then he says why he's unhappy.  I'm writing this in the Blogger android app and it seems to lack blockquote formatting abilities, so I'll have to do this crudely.  But anyway, yes, why he's unhappy with them:

"your hands are full of blood.
Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean;
remove the evil of your doings
from before my eyes;
cease to do evil,
learn to do good;
seek justice,
rescue the oppressed,
defend the orphan,
plead for the widow."

You'll notice a complete lack of instructions to keep gays from marrying.  Learning to do good, seeking justice and rescuing the oppressed could easily encompass stopping trying to discriminate against GLBT people.

So yes, odd that.  The centerpiece of the evidence for why god hates the gays really seems to be about hating selfish assholes who oppress minorities and take more than their fair share of the pie.

Is it worth noting that the tea party types elected to office on a wave of theological purity seem to mostly care about keeping gays oppressed and cutting spending on services for the poor?  Might I be excused the rhetorical question of asking just who the inhabitants of Sodom really are today?

Look, I'm an atheist.  I only see the bible as a collection of often contradictory stories written by many people that reflect the times they were living in.  There are certainly some good ideas in it, but there are a lot of terrible ones too.  I seek better reasons for supporting or opposing something than "ancient mythology says I should".  But when people who claim to be following ancient mythology end up citing passages that argue against them, what's an atheist to think?