Stop Using “Sodom” Like It’s a Thing

So, SCOTUS is hearing the Colorado Wedding Cake case, where a baker claims to have the right to not bake for gay couples wanting a wedding cake. As long as a baker views someone as naughty or a couple’s love as illegitimate and claims that homophobia is Jesus mandated (which is false, btw), he/she/they should be able to refuse gay people’s cake orders. Obviously, such blatant discrimination is wrong, and hopefully, SCOTUS will make that clear. 

Still, the No Cakes For Homos position has its defenders. Someone on Social Media today in defense of the “Let them eat anything else” view posted, “An entire city was burned to the ground for sexual sin.” I don’t know how cake or religious or civil ceremonies equates to sexual sin, or how not baking a cake will somehow body block to people wanting to do the horizontal mambo. Also, the doomed city wasn’t named in the “sexual sin” post (nor was the date of the supposed occurrence nor the source of the info), but I’m in the religion biz and recognized the Sodom (& Gomorrah) reference from Genesis 19 (a storyin the Jewish and Christian bibles) instantly. When ignorance is employed to defend and promote hate, I often have to offer a counter narrative. It probably does little good, but silence will surely reduce me to drooling in a fetal position somewhere, so for my own sanity, I say something. 

Here was my response:

“Surely you aren’t throwing up the Sodom myth (poor Gomorrah, they never get much mention) as your argument for allowing businesses to discriminate? Sodom’s ‘sin’ wasn’t non-discriminatory bakeries. It was cruelty, inhospitality, and indifference to the marginalized...the Religious Right is more guilty of those sins than most! The attempted gang rape of ‘angels’ (which was foiled by the way, and PS...rape is always bad and is not the same as mutually shared attraction, affection, or even consensual bump and grind) didn’t occur until after Sodom was judged to be unworthy, and it would have been spared if any decent people could be found...it wasn’t destroyed because wedding cakes could be purchased by anyone, but because NO ONE was kind or generous or welcoming (again, starting to get close the Fundies). And, mutual attraction, love, or committed relationships are never mentioned in the story, so ‘gay’ isn’t the issue. Furthermore, the hero of the story is Lot, who at the end of the story sleeps with not one but BOTH of his daughters (after offering them to the rape gang that tried to attack the angels...even Abraham who was willing to kill his own child was a better father!). So, really, no sane person would ever use that terrible story to condemn love or mutual attraction. No, there has never been a city destroyed because of sexual ‘sin’...and even if one had been, that would have NOTHING do with a legal case about commercial discrimination.”

So, you know, stop it. Stop using Sodom likes its a thing. It’s certainly not a moral argument that justifies dehumanizing same-gender loving people.