TAKE ONE FROM BIBLICAL COLUMN A, TWO FROM COLUMN B

This SFGate article provides a simplified Biblical context for the Great Gay Debate and other "moral values"/"Christian right" issues, and is worth a read, especially by the theologically challenged:

At issue is a question that probes the core of Christianity: How literally should Scripture be interpreted?

Fundamentalists maintain that every scintilla of Scripture reveals divine instruction. They are propelled by this adherence to a strict, literal interpretation of the Bible -- remember that they view straight people who have sex outside of marriage with a similar moral reprobation.

For these believers, the church loses its bearings when individual Christians pick and choose which passages to follow and which to jettison -- or as philosopher/rocker Bob Seger would say, "what to leave in, what to leave out."

But over time, nearly all Christian churches have opted to disregard certain Old and New Testament prohibitions -- against women speaking or appearing without their heads covered in church, for example -- as applicable to the year A.D. 60 but outdated two millennia later.

For centuries, Christians who practiced slavery cited biblical support, noting that Paul explicitly urged slaves to "obey your masters," although only the KKK fringe of the Christian right would today argue for reinstituting the slave trade.
...
In a perfect world, perhaps, political liberals would honor the right of conservative Christians to morally oppose certain types of sexual activity, much as they respect the right of vegans to morally oppose eating animal products. And conservative Christians would recognize the difference between holding personal moral beliefs and requiring their government to legally impose them on everyone.

For now, however, a perfect world seems rather far away.