Billboard Of The Day

Via Nashville television station WSMV:

In Portland, TN, a towering billboard quotes a Leviticus passage from the Old Testament: "You shall not lie with a man as with a woman. It is an abomination." Ronnie Monday, a Vietnam veteran, is the man behind the message. He commissioned the billboard and paid for it with donations from some friends. It has been up for four months. "When the president came out and indicated that he thought that gay marriage was OK, that was pretty much the last straw," Monday said. Love it or hate it, residents will have to get used to it. The contract on the billboard has been renewed for another six months. "As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. And he says it's wrong. And in my opinion, that's what it is, it's wrong," Monday said.

Dan Savage reacts:

When we bring up God's holy ban on eating shellfish or His loving command to kill your daughter if she isn't a virgin on her wedding night—passages in the Bible that Christians ignore—we're told that those passages are in the Old Testament, silly, so they neither apply nor matter to Christians because Jesus. Leviticus 18:22 goes on to say that men who lie with men as with women should be put to death. (Can't you just feel the love for people, people?) But if someone else were to put up a billboard in Portland proclaiming that all women who aren't virgins on their wedding nights should be stoned to death (Deuteronomy 22:20-21)—or that adulterers like Mark Sanford and David Vitter must be put to death (Leviticus 10:10) or that women should be forced to marry their rapists (Deuteronomy 22:28-29). Basically: It's fair game for them to use the Old Testament to beat up queers, but it's not fair for queers to use that same Old Testament to highlight their hypocrisy.