Rhetorical Analysis Of 'Homophobic? Read Your Bible'

A Rhetorical Analysis Homophobic? Re-Read Your Bible

The essay by Peter J. Gomes, entitled Homophobic? Read Your Bible, can be analyzed in many ways. The essay discusses the issue of homosexuality as it relates to politics, religion and the bible. The Baptist minister’s strong ethos and credibility provide an unexpected approach to the topic. Gomes thesis statement is: “The army of the discontented, eager for clear villains and simple solutions and ready for a crusade in which political self-interest and social anxiety can be cloaked in morality, has found hatred of homosexuality to be the last respectable prejudice of the century” (344). Gomes hopes to convince us how the bible is used politically to deny gay rights and his effective use

claiming a national morality traditional family values." And homosexuality as a litmus test of moral purity (344). They base their reasoning on false fallacies and misinterpretations from passages in the bible. Gnomes counters effectively with, “Fundamentalists and literalists, the storm troopers of the religious right, are terrified that Scripture, "wrongly interpreted," may separate them from their values. That fear stems from their own recognition that their "values" are not derived from Scripture, as they publicly claim” (344). A strong logos of bible chapters ensues with several interpretations of same passages within the bible. Gomes mentions the verses in the Bible in which the information he is referring to can be found so that the reader can check the verse for themselves. Further encouraging placing the power back into the hands of the people on an issue that is larger “too important to be left to scholars and seminarians alone. Our ability to judge ourselves and others rests on our ability to interpret Scripture intelligently” (346). This adds more persuasion and strength to the essay and it clearly shows he has no personal bias or agenda, that it is collectively ours as

The religious fundamentalist’s misuse of the bible to support and entrench those beliefs. Again he broadens the opposition’s malicious intent while illuminating a marked history utilizing the same design and misuse of the bible as a weapon of control. He goes on to say “that it is the same Bible that antifeminists use to keep women silent in the churches is the Bible that preaches liberation to captives and says that in Christ there is neither male nor female, slave nor free” ( 346).. He goes on to note more of these idiosyncrasies, which make his point very