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West Wing Homosexuality Episode

September 22, 2008     Time: 00:15:09
West Wing Homosexuality Episode

Summary

Conversation with William Lane Craig

Transcript West Wing Homosexuality Episode

 

INTRODUCTION: Does the President of the United States put this bible thumper in her place? Listen.

[Start West Wing clip]

PRESIDENT: I like how you call homosexuality an abomination.

WOMAN: I don’t say homosexuality is an abomination, Mr. President. The Bible does.

PRESIDENT: Yes, it does. Leviticus.

WOMAN: 18:22.

PRESIDENT: Chapter and verse. I wanted to ask you a couple of questions while I had you are here. I am interested in selling my youngest daughter into slavery as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. She’s a Georgetown sophomore, speaks fluent Italian, always cleared the table when it was her turn. What would a good price for her be? While thinking about that, can I ask another? My chief of staff, Leo McGarry, insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly says he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself or is it OK to call the police? Here’s one that is really important because we’ve got a lot of sports fans in this town. Touching the skin of a dead pig makes one unclean, Leviticus 11:7. If they promise to wear gloves, can the Washington Redskins still play football? Can Notre Dame? Can West Point? Does the whole town really have to be together to stone my brother John for planting different crops side by side? Can I burn my mother in a small family gathering for wearing garments made from two different threads? Think about those questions would you?

[Stop West Wing clip]

Kevin Harris: There is a very famous episode, Dr. Craig, of a TV show that was popular a while back called West Wing, a pretty liberal show. You and I have discussed one particular episode because it is often discussed and downloaded on YouTube, and that is when Martin Sheen, who plays the president, just completely debunks a character playing a conservative Christian on her views on homosexuality. This was supposed to be just a tour de force from this president who quoted her own Scriptures at her to refute her. He did this in conjunction with the belief that homosexuality was wrong. Now we’ve got a problem right there from the get-go. The equation of homosexuality and homosexual behavior.

Dr. Craig: Right. That is interesting in this clip that they confuse homosexuality with homosexual behavior. The Bible nowhere condemns having a homosexual orientation. This is something that a person is either born with or else is given as a result of the way he is brought up. But for the most part people don’t choose to have a homosexual orientation. Indeed, if you talk to many homosexuals they will say they would do anything if they could in some way change their orientation; that this isn’t a choice that they made and they often feel very unhappy about it. But the Bible doesn’t condemn someone for having a homosexual orientation. Indeed, the whole idea of being a homosexual is really a product of modern psychology. What the Bible condemns as morally wrong is homosexual behavior. The Bible says that sexual activity is to be limited to the safe confines of heterosexual marriage. Therefore, any sort of sexual activity outside of the marriage bond, whether it be adultery or premarital intercourse or homosexual behavior, is proscribed by God. This is contrary to God’s plan for human sexuality which is heterosexual marriage. Now that is important because what that means is that someone who has a homosexual orientation but is living a chaste life in keeping himself pure and not engaging in the behavior is not doing anything sinful. Yet, according to this clip from West Wing the Bible says that homosexuality is an abomination and it doesn’t. What it says is that homosexual behavior is morally abominable and that is the case whether it is engaged in by someone who is a homosexual or someone who is a heterosexual and chooses to do this kind of behavior. It is the behavior that the Bible condemns as wrong, not the orientation. [1]

Kevin Harris: The woman portraying the Christian in this particular episode even agreed with him. She said, “I don’t call homosexuality an abomination, the Bible does.”

Dr. Craig: Right, and thereby these writers very cleverly distort what the Bible says by putting it on the lips of a supposed Bible believing Christian.

Kevin Harris: Too bad the president didn’t ask you, Bill. They could have got you in there. And the first thing you would have said was, “No, the Bible doesn’t condemn homosexuality. The Bible does condemn the behavior, however.”

Dr. Craig: Yeah.

Kevin Harris: Now, the followup. What he begins to do now is he begins to quote Scripture to her saying, “I guess therefore I need to sell my daughter into slavery, and when the Washington Redskins play this weekend they are going to be sinning because they are going to be touching pigskin.” What is he doing now?

Dr. Craig: This is so cleverly written. You have to admire, grudgingly, the writers who wrote this dialogue because it is so clever. What it does is that it attempts to trivialize the Bible’s prohibitions of homosexual behavior by comparing it to other aspects of the Old Testament law which seem trivial and even bizarre by modern standards and thereby suggest that this prohibition is absurd and trivial as well. Of course, at one level is just silly. The Bible also says that murder and theft is wrong. Well, would you show that to be trivial and absurd by quoting these other Old Testament laws that you don’t like and that you find silly? Obviously not. The whole strategy in one sense is wrongheaded. But it is an attempt, I think, to try to ridicule biblical morality by pointing out certain things in the Old Testament that sound strange in the ears of modern readers.

Kevin Harris: The bully platform that reached millions of viewers and continues to reach millions. This clip has been played over and over and over. West Wing was very popular. What a dastardly piece of propaganda – well-written however.

Dr. Craig: The other thing that I noticed about this, Kevin, I think that is based on a very fundamental confusion is that it doesn’t distinguish between the moral law in the Old Testament and the ritual law in the Old Testament. Certain things in the Old Testament are prohibited as unclean to the people of Israel. There are certain foods like pork and lobster and other sorts of foods that were ritually unclean. Similarly, other actions would make you ritually unclean. If a woman is during her menstrual period then she is ritually unclean and would need to go through that period and then bath before she could enter into the temple. There were all sorts of things. If you touched a dead body, for example, you were ritually unclean. But these had nothing to do with the moral law. People who were ritually unclean were not thought to be sinful. A woman during her menstrual period isn’t sinning. Someone who has had to participate in burying a corpse isn’t a sinful person because he has buried a family member. It is purely a ritual uncleanness, a kind of ceremonial uncleanness, that has no moral dimension to it at all. So what this clip does is that it confuses the moral law of the Old Testament with certain things in the ritual laws of clean and unclean, and tries to make the moral law against homosexual behavior look trivial by comparing it to this ceremonial law. And that is just mixing apples and oranges. The prohibition against homosexual behavior like the prohibition against murder and adultery and theft and so forth, that is part of the moral law of God that is valid for all time. But there are all sorts of other aspects of the Old Testament that are merely transitory, temporary ritual law, like the difference between clean and unclean which is no longer observed today and which Jesus in fact did away with. So you cannot impugn the moral law of God by comparing it to certain aspects of Old Testament ritual law about what is ceremonially clean and unclean which does indeed sound very, very strange to modern ears. [2]

Kevin Harris: But that is exactly what this episode does, exactly what this clip does. He puts her in her place with her own Scriptures.

Dr. Craig: Right. And talking about how the Washington Redskins are going to be having problems by touching the football and things of that sort which is, again, just silly because that is a reflection of this Old Testament ritual law that had nothing to do with sin or evil or morality whatsoever in a way the prohibition against homosexual behavior did.

Kevin Harris: Can we as Christians further say that the New Testament also condemns homosexual behavior, so it affirms that moral aspect?

Dr. Craig: Yes, that is what is significant. When Jesus came, he did away with these ritual laws about ceremonial cleanness and uncleanness. Jesus said what goes into a man isn’t what defiles a man. It is what comes out of a man, what comes out of his heart, that defiles a man: evil thoughts, jealously, lust, murder, and so forth. These come out of the heart. These are what render a man defiled. So Jesus abolished the ceremonial distinction between clean and unclean that are observed by orthodox Jews still today but which Christians don’t observe. But the New Testament reaffirms the moral law of the Old Testament. For example, the Ten Commandments which would include any kind of sexual behavior outside of marriage. Homosexual activity would fall under the prohibition of any kind of adultery, any kind of extramarital sexual intimate contact. So the New Testament does reaffirm these Old Testament prohibitions against homosexual behavior on the part of anybody, whether homosexual or heterosexual.

Kevin Harris: By the way, we’ve done a podcast on the issue of homosexuality and the Christian. I want to encourage people to go to that podcast because we deal with many of the issues that come up when we discuss this. And that is, can I have the proclivity? Does that mean I have to act on it? Can I live a chaste life even though I have homosexual desires? I didn’t ask for these desires. Can I be a follower of Christ as a single person? So we do deal with this whole issue.

Dr. Craig: That is right. And it is important for folks who are listening who are struggling with these desires to realize that simply in virtue of having these desires doesn’t make them sinful. Rather, it is what you do with them. A person who lives a pure and chaste life before God is honoring God, whether he is heterosexual or homosexual in orientation. All of us are called to be chaste and to keep our thought life and our physical life pure and holy before God.

Kevin Harris: Bill, as we wrap up today, it seems to me that not only do the secularists get it wrong here in this West Wing episode but we in the church often get it wrong because we use the same language. We tend to say homosexuality is an abomination. What the church means by that, what most Christians mean by that, is that the behavior is wrong. But they don’t make that distinction. Therefore, they put a person who struggles with homosexual feelings, desires, proclivities, into a state of hopelessness.

Dr. Craig: And condemnation, which is just wrong. A person who is leading a chaste life and has this orientation under the control of the Holy Spirit is a brother or sister that we should welcome and not condemn. So these kind of blanket condemnations such as are exhibited in this West Wing episode are really quite unbiblical and sub-Christian. [3]