That’s a sexist version, as well as a monogamist version.
The more tolerant version is:
“Therefore shall a person leave his/her parent(s), and shall cleave unto his/her partner(s), and they shall become one flesh.”

The Hegelian Mambo begins again, leftward, ever leftward …

The “tolerant” version advanced by Mr. Jose advanced still retains part of the opressive legacy of obsuratistist, Christian tradition. The whole notion of “cleaving” to anyone results in legal or social opression. People who express their love for others in non-permanent ways are called the vilest and most bioged names even by some who on other issues are admirably progressive.

Also the “tolerant” version discriminates against those people who are raised by non-traditional parent combinations. A tolerant and enclusive version would read thus: “Thus shall a person leave his/her parent(s), and love the one he/her is with.”

The Biblical injunction is very clear: A man shall cleave unto his wife. To change this arrangement is to defy the Living God. Partnerships of the same sex for purposes of bonding in marriage is bestial. It goes against evrything holy and sacred. Nothing can justify such abnormalism. For society to accept it as a measure of tolerance would be indicative of complete surrender to deviate behavior in every form. Our laws would have to be redefined and what was once regarded as immoral would then be accepted as rightful and mutually sociable. Gott in himmel, shall we tear down the pillars of honor and decency? Will we reconstruct the codes of virtue and supplant for it the cracked columns of moral decay? Must all be tainted by change that, in itself, is abhorrent to the rational mind? No argument, no passionate plea for understanding can make whole what has been broken from senseless mentality. Are we leaning toward that climax where we shall fall ‘as over-ripe fruit’ into the hands of the enemy? Justice cannot be marred and laws cannot be tarnished by those whose selfisn agendas seek to overtake the will of the people!

Mr. Auster, Mr. Jose and Joshua have their hearts in the right place but seem not to realize the blatant species-ism of their proposed formulations. After all, as noted ethicist Peter Singer has pointed out, there is no good reason to distinguish morally between human beings and other creatures capable of suffering. Such terms as “love” and “parent” are not easily applicable to the full diversity of life on earth and perpetuate the marginalization of certain beings. The passage should read:

“Therefore shall a multicellular entity* leave its biological antecedents** and display affiliative behaviours with regard to another multicellular entity.

*or virus
**nothing in this text is to be interpreted as discriminatory in intent as regards asexual organisms; as regards the latter, read ‘spatio-temporally prior organism stage and/or body part’.”

Some of the poetry of the original is lost, admittedly, but a more truly spiritual and inclusive meaning is expressed.

But Julien, your formulation eliminates speciesism while unwittingly bringing us all the way back to monogamy! Surely you did not intend this repressive definition?

After perusing the comments of others, especially those in favor of the union which is nothing less than despicable and wholly non-functional, I am pleased that my position is identifiable with truthful underpinnings. For it is truth here that needs recalling. Truth defends not itself but can only be targeted with adverse opposites. It cannot be destoyed or changed. One may rally against it and make denial a pursuit. But unless its eternalness can be absolved by pleas greater than divinity itself in the form of the Creator_God, nothing shall vanquish it; the courts will be dismembered to dust but the everlasting rightness of pure truth will abide over the clamor of lost souls.

Just who IS Edwin Vogt anyway?

How easy monogamous notions enter into the language of the most enclusive writer! I am sure that Julien only inadvertantly used such language. I sympathize with him because pro-monogamous bias is an istitutional part of American culture.

However, while I believe that society ought to affirm and recognize the ways in which people show love to their partner(s); and while I believe that “partner(s)” includes both human animals and other animals; I have difficuty seeing how society could or would recognize and affirm “affiliative behavior” between non-human animals or between plants.

Viruses? I’m sorry but I must draw a line. Their rights end when they harm the rights of other organisms.

Thanks to Mr. Coleman and Joshua for drawing my attention to a serious mistake. As Joshua points out, pro-monogamism, like so many other forms of hate, is so deeply ingrained in all of us that we must at all times look out for one another. Constant vigilance! However, I think my wording might be acceptable if we stress that the boundaries between one multi-cellular organism and the next are fairly arbitrary at the level of quantum mechanics. Thus one creature is not really so different from a menage a trois or a convention, when you really think about it.

In fact the more I think about it, the more it seems to me that the very idea of a “person” or even a “multi-cellular entity” as some distinct entity is highly anthropomorphic. That is, it presupposes the perspective of a certain kind of thing (that doesn’t really exist anyway). Maybe what we need is this:

“Thus shall something be consensually subtracted from another thing and added to yet another thing, or a few others, or whatever, and all of them be equal to each other.”

Are we getting closer to truth and justice here?

There seem to be an awful lot of “obsuratistists” on this forum…

Thanks to Mr. Jose, Joshua, Julien, and Mr. Coleman for giving us an idea of how vibrant, exciting, and richly diverse a truly “living” Bible would be, once it has been set free from the dead hand of the past.

I think that Mr. Vogt is under the mistaken impression that the postings on this board were meant to be taken literally. I think we all agree with the idea that marriage was set by God and is not alterable by human desires. What we were doing is taking the idea that the Bible should be rewritten to be more tolerant and taking it to its logical extreme to show what a ridiculous idea it is.

In reply to the above, allow me to state that my positions on social issues are not concoted from resrvations of my own but are based soley on the written Word of God. Think me not as a fundamentalist, in definition only, but as one who succinctly believes that anyone who adds or detracts fron the Scriptures is accursed. God’s
Word is pure and perfect. We cannot alter his arrangements to satisfy our own preferences. This would lead to ultimate chaos; the condition of the Sodomite is a vivid example. May I add, too, that I am not a religionist. As there is perfect order in the universe, so there is the same in the outlay of salvation as designed in those sacred revelations. We cannot impose what has already been put into conception by that Higher Power. No, my friend, marriage is as stipulated and sanctioned by God.

I still don’t think Mr. Vogt gets the fact that we were being sarcastic when we “suggested” alterations to the Bible.
No one posting on this board was actually suggesting that we change the Bible. Nor do we think that our preferences, rather than the written word of God, are why homosexual marriage is wrong.
All of the above posts where we pretended to suggest alterations in the Bible were examples of SARCASM, that is, we were saying the opposite of what we believed in order to point out how ridiculous the other side was.