James:

Thank you for commending the tone. It is important in a discussion like this and your response also fits that bill nicely.

As to substance. On your point 1. Some appreciation for the associations in the historical background of Leviticus might explain why certain laws were handled as emphatically as they were. Violation of the sabbath, to use your example, was seen as a marker of what made a faithful person in Israel. Keeping the Sabbath holy was marked out at the start as part of the Ten Commendments. But now for the more important point, the contrast you raise about subtle interpretation of narrative: How subtle is it really to read a story and see where polygamy gets those who practice it consistently into trouble?  Of course, all of this also slips past the point made about where we are by the time of Jesus on marriage. 

On point 2: I think it would be fair to say on slavery that opponents did exist through time. Paul even appears to suggest in 1 Cor 7 that if an opportunity existed to gain freedom to take it. Philemon certainly changes the way the role of the slave is seen in the context ot the culture. This blunts your initial point in that it is not clear that homosexuality as a practice or gay marriage as a practice has ever had its religious defenders until very recently nor does it have such counter-toned texts in Scripture.  Let us turn tothe other examples. The use of physical violence to elicit a conversion the Bible saw as a choice (and pictured as such in parables like the Prodigal) is not a legitimate reading of the text (as I suspect you appreciate). I also know that the example you give on interracial marriage is not only a good example to raise, but often did meet with such a biblical claim, a claim that ignores the picture of reconciliation between nations that stands at the core of the gospel as articulated within the Bible.  It also is true that sometimes our modern sensitivities do open us up to what the text is doing, but in this case (gay marriage) we are seeking an entire redefinition of an area consistently treated as wrong in Scripture-- and very explciitly so. That is what my remark alluded to in speaking of a redefintion by modern and secular standards. This is why I referred to religious standards in making the remark. Here we are not discussing the interpretation of narrative texts, but the explicit declarations of passages laid out across time and in a variety of settings in Scripture. This kind of multiple attestation should speak for something that the examples you raise lack in terms of what the Bible explicitly says. Where are the counter-tone texts? For all the debate readings of the Bible do engender on certain issues (and there are some, but I do not think they are in the above examples for the reasons noted), I do not think one can say the Bible sends mixed or genuinely debatable interpretive signals on this issue.

dlb