IS THE BOOK OF ROMANS OBSCURE?

Long considered to be the most thorough theological treatise in the Bible, Paul's epistle to the Romans has now been relegated to obscurity by Barack Obama. Speaking on the issue of homosexual marriage, the Democrat Presidential candidate said,

I will tell you that I don't believe in gay marriage, but I do think that people who are gay and lesbian should be treated with dignity and respect and that the state should not discriminate against them. So, I believe in civil unions that allow a same-sex couple to visit each other in a hospital or transfer property to each other. I don't think it should be called marriage, but I think that it is a legal right that they should have that is recognized by the state. If people find that controversial then I would just refer them to the Sermon on the Mount, which I think is, in my mind, for my faith, more central than an obscure passage in Romans.

Well, if we do push aside Paul's more obscure writings like Romans I wonder if Jesus had anything to say about marriage (er, 'unions', nudge, nudge, wink, wink). In the very same gospel as the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus quotes Genesis in Matthew 19:4-5 and said,

"Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'?" (emphasis added, nac)

In that passage Jesus affirms the intent of marriage and of sexual relations. They are to be within marriage and between a man and a wife. And since Jesus also said in the gospel of Matthew (15:19-20) that

"For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, slanders. These are the things which defile the man..."

it seems that Mr. Obama will find that the thing he condones is condemned even in non-obscure books like Matthew.

NON-BELIEVING VOTERS DISTRESSED

In the face of Presidential candidates like Huckabee and Romney, apparently atheist voters feel disconnected from the political process:

One presidential hopeful is a preacher, another proudly Mormon, and most openly tout their Christianity. In an arena where faith can make or break a politician, the one in 10 Americans who profess no religion feel left in the cold.

"They're very disconcerted," said Darren Sherkat, an atheist sociology professor specializing in religion at Southern Illinois University.

"They're horrified by both the Democratic and Republican rhetoric surrounding religion -- that people who are not religious ... are immoral, that they're not qualified to serve in public office," he said.

Well, they do have Hillary don't they?

At any rate, while Huckabee and Romney do little to inspire (me), I do hope at least this much is true:

[Margaret Downey] claims atheists are "the fastest-growing minority in America."

And I thought the article was trying to highlight some sort of problem.