December 13, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Don’t like it? Change it. That’s the approach to Scriptural translation taken by the creators of a new gay-friendly Bible.
“You can’t choose your sexuality, but you can choose Jesus. Now you can choose a Bible, too,” say the creators of the Bible, emblazoned with a rainbow cross, which was launched at the end of November.
The editors explain in a statement that they took each of the eight Bible verses traditionally used to argue that homosexuality is sinful, and edited them “in a way that makes homophobic interpretations impossible.”
For instance, in the first letter to Timothy, where St. Paul refers to “them that defile themselves with mankind,” the new Bible simply excises the word “mankind.”
This new translation, the editors say, will “resolve interpretive ambiguity in the Bible as it pertains to homosexuality.”
Other than the eight verses in question, the Bible uses the King James translation verbatim. The “Queen James” title is based upon a theory that King James, the British king who commissioned the famous translation of the Bible, was bisexual.
Click “like” if you want to defend true marriage.
But while the “homophobic” passages have been altered, the editors say that “the Bible is still filled with inequality and even contradiction that we have not addressed. No Bible is perfect, including this one.”
The homosexual news outlet Pink News has identified Reverend J. Pearson of San Francisco’s Holy Innocents Episcopal church as the mastermind behind the rainbow-themed Bible.
Pearson, however, is far from the first to translate the Bible in such a way as to whitewash its prohibition of certain sins, or to otherwise modernize Holy Writ.
A Bible translation praised by Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams in 2004 had been “updated” in various ways, including a passage in which St. Paul urged his followers to have a “regular partner.” Thomas Jefferson famously compiled a condensed New Testament that excluded any mention of miracles or supernatural events, including Jesus’ resurrection.
Rumors about a gay-friendly Bible had circulated back in 2010, when the Dead Serious News website ran an article claiming that a new Bible translation would soon be released. Some mistook the satirical news piece for fact, prompting Snopes to weigh in and declare the rumor false.
But with the publication of the Queen James Bible, it seems reality has caught up with satire.