I also want women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or expensive clothes, but with good deeds, appropriate for women who profess to worship God.

A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent.

1 Timothy 2 vs. 9-12 (NIV)

Perhaps a prominent Alaskan?

(more below the fold)As Christian author John Shore noted in his latest blog entry, this stinks of hypocrisy (emphasis mine):

So I’m honestly and truly asking, simply because I don’t understand and want to: How do Christians who embraced and supported Sarah Palin in particular for her adherence to “traditional” Biblical values reconcile how utterly she violated Paul’s injunctions to women to not wear expensive clothes, to stay quiet, to remain submissive, and to have no authority over men? If vigorously campaigning for Vice President of the United States (while, as we all know, wearing expensive clothes) isn’t in direct, overt, purposeful, and sustained opposition to all four of those things, then … then King Kong was a leprechaun. I would think evangelicals and Biblical fundamentalists would reject Ms. Palin for … well, for one, so ambitiously seeking authority over men.

What do I say to non-Christians when they assert that Christians are being blatantly hypocritical and even opportunistically bigoted when they use Paul’s words as justification for the condemnation of homosexuality, and at the same time ignore Paul’s very explicit words when doing so suits their own personal desires and ambitions? How do we use Paul to argue for California’s Proposition 8, but not use Paul to argue against Sarah Palin?

It’s worth noting that this a man whose religious faith teaches him that gay sex is sinful, yet who still said the following in an earlier blog:

If my gay friends, whom my life experience tells me can no sooner stop being gay than I can stop being straight, have to go to hell after they die, then I’m going with them. Too many gays and lesbians have been too good to me in this life for me to leave them behind in the next.

…I am sure Christ will let me make that choice. I’m not sure of a lot of things, but I’m positive Christ understands sacrificing oneself for the love of others.

I’ve now sent John Shore an email with links to four articles on the website of the UK’s LGCM by (in order of length, shortest first) Margaret Evans, Dr. Alan Sheard, Thomas Streiter, and Rev. Neil Dawson – I recommended them to anyone who wants to know how to counter the supposed “Biblicality” of homophobia; a pre-warning, however: the piece by Rev. Dawson is quite in-depth and therefore lengthy.