Its about **modern** reinterpretation of religion, not what is in the Bible, or any other holy book. Your average fundie cherry picks it the same way they cherry pick other people's statements, to support their nutty interpretations of how reality should work. That hating gays is called OK by the *same* passages that list about a dozen other things which they would consider morally reprehensible and illegal doesn't matter, because they only care about the one line about gays. The fact that its full of violence doesn't matter either. I have had them say, straight to my face, that while the murder of jews by Hitler and things like Durfar are wrong, the same things in the Bible are right, because *god* commanded it. That Hitler thought Aryans where gods chosen and blamed jews for undermining them, or that Durfar is a case of racial cleansing, driven by the same, "God wants us to have everything.", mentality doesn't matter. They first will insist that Hitler wasn't a Catholic (or a *true* Catholic, or some variation of that theme), and then insist that Durfar and other similar stuff doesn't count, because well.. its the wrong god...
The can't even get their facts straight about nudity. One group will insist on quoting passages that show a prophet going nude to his people to preach to them (it not being wrong if done in humility) and point out how the there is no case, even back as far as Besthebda (or how ever it was spelled) where the victim, no matter how nude, was ever the one punished for someone else's sexual deviancy. The fundie will just ignore these passages, make up some radical interpretation of some other passage, insist that a thousand years of Catholic prudery (its really quite recent prudery) can't be wrong, well, except for the fact that Catholics are not, according to them, true Christians, then dare you to contradict them.
Fact is, you can't talk about nudity and sex, and our reaction to it, without bringing up the fact that 90% of the people that object to both are people that have a personal Bible they read all the time, but who, as a rule, never read it cover to cover, never read other historical works about the events in it, never read more than one version, and probably have an annotated version, with convenient explanations for why the interpretation rational people have of it is all wrong, and only the wacko one counts. They are precisely the people that will read about god hating gays (but apparently not lesbians, if you interpret the passage literally lol), while insisting that the fact that the same section of the Bible is filled with stuff that would get you arrested in even the most fundie areas, (well, maybe not among the severe nuts...), is all irrelevant today. Not too many of them would let their daughter be sold off to pay their own debts, or stone their son to death for failing to behave them. But hating gay people, that's just fine. They are the ones that will gloss over historical facts about baptism, where you where "required" to be unclothed before god, the passages where his prophets humbly preached to his people in the nude, etc., and insist that nudity was always bad, will always be bad, and they are sure it says so "someplace" in the Bible.
And they are not even the only ones doing that stuff. Ever hear the phrase, "God helps those who help themselves."? Well, its not anything Jesus ever said, and the entire OT is a laundry list of people being helped "only" if they did what god commanded, or for free, just because god felt like it that day. Nothing anyone in it ever gains is achieved by their own hand, and half the stuff that is god gets ****ed off about and floods, blasts down or otherwise destroys in anger at them *daring* to do it without his permission. So, why do probably 90% of the people who believe think that phrase has anything to do with their religion?
Its just symtomatic of the same stuff. If you want nudity to be evil, quote something from the Bible. Want nudity to be good, quote the Bible. Want to murder people that are not like you? Quote the Bible. Want to save people from the evils of war? Quote the Bible. Damn near anything can be justified by just quoting the holy texts. And no one will call you on it, because almost no one that believes actually reads it completely, and everyone else is lying and cherry picking it the same way you are. One of the single most common traits of a crank after all is that it doesn't matter if the other crank is 180 degrees the other way around from your viewpoint (they insist its midnight, you insist its noon, while you are both wrong and its midmorning), just so long as both of you are against those evil heathens that both of you dislike. You can always get around to denoucing each other for being unbelievers and evil "after" you have gotten rid of all the people that insist you are both completely nuts. lol
