Sir Ian McKellen's Grudge with Leviticus

by Michael A. Jones, change.org

How's this for the premise of X-Men 4: Magneto decides that instead of seeking world domination, he's just going to wage battle against radical right-wing religious folks who use the Bible as a means of beating up on LGBT people.

Well, it might hit a little close to home for Sir Ian McKellen, the out British actor who plays Magneto. As it turns out, he's been quietly waging a war against the use of religion as a weapon of oppression against LGBT people all along in his real life. His method? At every hotel he visits, he rips out a page in Leviticus that fundamentalists use to label LGBT people as sinful.

McKellen tells Details magazine that he's not intending to vandalize the Bible. He just thinks the world would be better off if people took the passages in Leviticus a little less literally.

"I'm not proudly defacing the book, but it's a choice between removing that page and throwing away the whole Bible," McKellen says.

For those not familiar with Leviticus 18:22, it might be interpreted as the most homophobic verse in the Bible. It starts with the familiar refrain, "Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind," and finishes up with a powerful "it is an abomination" punch. But the passage is often misunderstood, and all too often used to justify hatred and violence toward LGBT people -- as was the case earlier this month in New York, where the friend of a gay basher said that attacking gay people was justified because the book of Leviticus approved.

Taking such a literal interpretation of this passage of Leviticus is an irresponsible way to look at the historical context of Scripture, according to many progressive theologians. For instance, look at the way Rev. David Eck puts it on his "I'm Christian, I'm Gay, Deal With It!" blog. Rev. Eck writes, "It is a misuse of the Bible to quote Leviticus as an answer to today's ethical question of whether homosexuality is right or wrong. Leviticus was not addressing this question. The concern in Leviticus, the cultural context of that text, and the meaning of male-male sex in ancient Israel are all very foreign to the present situation."

Better yet? The use of the word "abomination" is actually better translated as "taboo," and not "go out and beat gay people up in the streets because of their sin." Having sex with people of the same gender might have indeed been "taboo" thousands upon thousands of years ago in a political context. But that says absolutely nothing about its morality or immorality.

Really, the point is that there are a 1,001 ways to interpret the passages in the Bible that are typically used to bash homosexuality. That's an awful lot of ambiguity to be taking a passage in Leviticus so seriously.

So perhaps what Sir Ian McKellen should do is stop ripping pages out of the Bible, and instead start inserting a few pages. And maybe add this disclaimer: "Keep in mind that the Bible was written by men, thousands of years ago, and that whatever certain televangelists might tell you, this book isn't so cut-and-dry on a lot of things."

(Photo courtesy of http://backstage.blogs.com)