pf:

It will help if what you describe the Bible as saying is accurately what it says. Eating pork was a matter of clean and uncleanness for Israel. This is not the same as being sin or not.  It was to be avoided but it did not mean one had sinned. It did prevent one entering the temple-- that is what cultic impurity was about. It is a distinct category from sin. OT scholars can help you here. But this is really a side point.

The case you are arguing is that the Bible is not divine revelation but a human book. To quote you, "The point is that the Bible is a book that reflects the ideas of its authors, not some divine instruction." Now this actually agrees with the point I made in my original post as well as in the second one. The debate is not as much about what the Bible says on this specific issue, but what the Bible is and how it is used in this discussion. The argument you make is one that views the Bible to be like any other book. As I noted in my first post, this is obviously a view people hold, but it is not a view that can be called one rooted in the Judeo-Christian tradition, which does have a category for God's Word. So your appeal fits into what I was trying to say in part in my posts. This is a discussion between those within a religious tradition and those who operate in a more secular manner. I am not trying to make a judgment here, just trying to be descriptive of what is going on. Part of what I complained about in the Newsweek piece was a religious cover they were trying to give to their discussion, a cover I did not think reflected the tradition they claimed to represent when their starting point (in Meacham's piece) was that the nature of sexuality is the starting point for this discussion, along with the Miller article's attempt to dismiss what the Bible did say on the topic (in part through an incomplete presentation of what the Bible does say on the topic). These distinct starting points significantly impact how the views discuss the issue.

As to whether arguing against gay marriage is to side with a "primitive culture which had an unreasonable and barbaric prejudice." That is the question.  I actually am tackling that issue in my next post which treats homosexuality directly.  Up to this point, the posts have dealt with other issues. But let's reflect on what you are claiming about homosexuality, cultures, and prejudice. Has humanity only become emlightened on this issue in the last 50 years? Has the stream of human views on this specific matter only seen the light so recently? Is it not the case that for many centuries, this kind of relationship has been questioned, questioned in circles including those having nothing to do with the Bible? Are we limited only to what the Bible says here in making this judgment about how this has been seen as a matter of culture? I think history will show that is not the case. In other words, the question extends beyond whatever one may think about what the Bible says. It touches on issues of human identity and gender "design" -- on how we see creation and society. Perhaps what you call an "unreasonable and barbaric prejudice" is not that at all. Perhaps human judgment over the centuries reflects the counsel of a wide range of human thinking involving a variety of cultures over a long period of time that has come to the reasoned judgment that something is not quite right here and that the impact is societal and thus worthy of real concern.This was actually going to be the point of my next post. So you have the preview. One of the points I have made is that unlike the other topics you raise (pork, slavery, genocide), where there are counter-tone texts for these topics, there are no such counter-tone texts for this topic in the Bible. It is clear that these other issues were not seen in a permanent kind of light within the Bible. Pork, slavery, and the example of genocide in the taking of the land [an event I already described as exceptional and not one that was to be a rule] all have texts pointing to their less than absolute role. Nothing like that exists for this topic in Scripture. So there is also in these deliberations a question of scale (both inside and outside the Bible) we should keep our eye on.

dlb