I’ve learned a great deal from reading Robert M. Price. But probably the most important thing I’ve learned is that people don’t read the Bible and then decide what it means. They may read the Bible, but they do so in the context of what their pastors think it means. And where did the pastors get their ideas? You get the idea. There is no literal reading of the Bible.

Blue Texan has written a very good article over at Crooks & Liars, Billy Graham’s Full Page Ad in the NY Times Urges Followers to Vote Against Abortion, Gay Marriage. In Graham’s Times ad, he tells all good Christians that they should vote for biblical principles. Those principles just happen to be the usual right wing hate issues: anti-choice for both reproduction and marriage rights.

Blue Texan points out that Graham doesn’t mention other biblical principles like prohibition of usury or caring for the poor or men having multiple wives. And he calls it when he says that Graham is just doing what Christian demagogues always do. “They begin with a set of right-wing values, then they selectively interpret the bible to comport to those values.”

Smart Christians are fond of pointing out that they don’t really believe in an anthropogenic God. They don’t envision a guy with a white beard sitting on a throne in the clouds. God it something much greater than that—something unimaginable. And yet, they claim that he would care about such trivial things as human sexuality. It seems bizarre. But as Robert Price has shown, this isn’t about God. Religion is just the accumulated prejudices of generations of church leaders. And this is why they can skip multiple passages about being kind to others and just focus on the ones that say, “Get the fags!”

I do wish I believed in heaven and hell, because I think it would be fitting if Billy Graham spent eternity being anally raped with a red hot poker.