James Talarico

And I think trying to take the Hebrew tradition and interpret it for our own political benefit really does a lot of violence to that scripture.

I mean, the word homosexuality wasn't even invented until the 19th century.

So if you see the word homosexuality in your Bible, that's an interpretation.

That's a translation and using a word that didn't even come around until thousands of years later.

It could be a whole host of things.

I mean, some of these things are put in place for health reasons.

Obviously, they didn't have modern medicine, and so—

You know, if there were things that were considered hazardous to your physical well-being, sometimes those were included in the law.

Preserving family structure, right?

You obviously had a patriarchal structure in the ancient world where it wasn't just about your commitment to your wife.

It really was about, you know—

how land and wealth we passed on to children.

And so all those things were important to protect that family structure.

So some of these ancient commandments, which again, I don't claim to know what the original meaning was, may have been put in place for some of those reasons.

But again, if this was something that really was central to Jesus's ministry,

I would think he would have said something about it, right?

We have four gospels with tons of teachings from Jesus, and none of them are about this.

So I get suspicious when anybody, whether it's a televangelist or a politician, tells me that something is central to my faith when Jesus never talks about it.

To me, that should, I think, ring alarm bells as to what is the agenda here.

What is someone trying to get across?