Christian Attorney Calls Re-marrying a Wife after Divorce a "Terrible Sin"... Or Does He?


According to Deuteronomy 24:1-4, if a husband re-marries a wife after she has been "defiled" by having sexual relations (even within the bounds of marriage) with another man, he is committing a terrible sin. Penfield attorney Bob Cholette calls on Christians to lobby for a constitutional amendment opposing this abomination, which is permitted in all 50 states.... Or does he?

When I first read the op-ed piece, I thought, wow, this guy is some kind of nut case!

It was Bob Cholette's column, "A Stealth Attack On Traditional Marriage" published in the Brighton-Pittsford Post (and other Messenger Post newspapers) April 14.

A little background first: I don't normally read the Messenger Post newspapers. I just happened to pick up the front section of the B-P Post when I was having lunch at Wegman's in Pittsford Plaza after an appointment nearby on Wednesday. People buy newspapers and read them in the seating area, then leave them behind for others to read.

(For those of you not from the Rochester area -- with the exception of the Canandaigua Daily Messenger, the Messenger Post papers are weeklies that cover various suburban areas surrounding Rochester. Canandaigua is a lovely town at the northern tip of Canandaigua Lake, one of the famous "Finger Lakes," about 45 minutes from Rochester. Also: Wegman's is a grocery chain that prides itself in gigantic, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink (and you can get that at Wegman's Chase-Pitkin stores) markets. The Pittsford Plaza store is Wegman's largest, and it includes a take-out/eat-in-store gourmet kitchen, with a large seating area on the second floor.)

The headline to Cholette's piece caught my eye, and the sub-head "while gay marriage attracts a controversy, something different has been going undetected" really yanked me in. Then this: "As most of you already know (or surely you have surmised from past installments of this column), as a God-fearing, morally-centered, family-values social conservative, I am totally, 100 percent dead-set against homosexual marriage."

Well, no, I didn't know. In fact, I'd never read anything from this guy before, and I thought, sheesh! Another anti-gay Christian nut spouting his hatred of all things gay and his belief that gay people in committed relationships are an "abomination unto the Lord." (Of all the things to be against -- people choosing to care deeply for one another and to help each other through life's travails!)

So I was having deep misgivings about Messenger Post newspapers publishing this claptrap -- a very lengthy piece by local newspaper standards. But I had to find out what the guy had to say, if only to prepare an argument against him.

Then this: "But recently another matrimonial abomination has come to my attention that is equally troubling -- and perhaps even more so: retrosexual marriage."

Say what? Now, I know "metrosexual" refers to straight males who adopt certain elements of stereotypical gay male culture: an interest in interior decoration, fashion, meticulous, obsessive grooming, etc. But retrosexual?

Cholette: "Retrosexuals (as I call them) are confused, misguided people, who, having been married and divorced, later choose to resume sexual relationships with their ex-husbands and wives -- often after an intervening marriage to someone else. As if this practice wasn't sinful enough, retrosexuals then desire to remarry their former spouses and thereby avail themselves of all the rights and privileges of civil matrimony."

And further down, "Just open your Bible to the Old Testament. There, it is clearly stated that if a man divorces a woman, and the woman marries another man, and then the woman's second husband divorces her, or dies, 'her first husband is not to marry her again; he is to consider her defiled.' (Deuteronomy 24:1-4). "If he married her again, it would be offensive to the Lord. You are not to commit such a terrible sin.' (Deuteronomy 24:4)." (For a slightly different translation, go here.)

Oh, come on now! This guy can't be serious! So I looked at his ID tag: a Penfield attorney. Hmmm. He's not a Reverend for some Bible-thumping fundamentalist church, the kind that would insist that the world is flat if the Bible said so. Maybe this was a great big joke, along the lines of Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal, wherein Swift (in 1789) proposed that the solution to poverty among Irish families (burdened by large numbers of children) was for them to eat their young.

(From Swift: "I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout.")

When Swift wrote that satirical piece, some people actually thought he was serious, when in fact he frequently defended the Irish against economic oppression by the British. So I thought, maybe this guy Cholette is pulling everyone's leg.

Certainly, as far as I was concerned, what Cholette wrote was a perfect argument for why people should not read the Bible literally and assume that everything it said centuries ago should be applied, word-for-word, to contemporary life.

So I re-read his introduction. Well, I dunno.... There are plenty of nut cases out there expressing outrageously stupid ideas like this.

I took the paper home with me, thinking I would write up an argument against Cholette's position on this weblog, and perhaps to the Messenger Post editorial page. I even started it. The original title to this entry was "So-called Christian Attorney Calls Re-marrying a Wife a 'Terrible Sin'."

Intelligence finally got the better of me. I figured that before I put all that energy into my argument, I'd better check the facts (as I frequently admonish my journalism students to do). So I put in a call to the editorial page editor, Dan Hall.

He assured me that, indeed, it was a spoof. Cholette's point was exactly mine: you can't take the Bible literally and accept every single word in it whole. Arguments against gay marriage based on quotations from the Bible that presumably call homosexual relations an "abomination unto the Lord" simply can't hold water if you take into account all the parts of the Bible that even fundamentalist Christians ignore.

Now I really appreciate Cholette as a columnist, and I guess I'll have to read the Messenger Post papers more often.

Meanwhile, in the process of researching on the 'Net for this piece, I checked out Deuteronomy 24. Here's something else it says:

"If a man has recently married, he must not be sent to war or have any other duty laid on him. For one year he is to be free to stay at home and bring happiness to the wife he has married." (Deuteronomy 24:5, New International Version)

Whoa!

I wonder if President Bush knows he has violated the Biblical injunction against sending newly married men to war when they are supposed to be home bringing happiness to their wives...

Heads up, Mr. Bush! Send them home immediately or prepare yourself for the wrath of the Lord!

******

Post Script: According to Word Spy, "retrosexual" is an actual term now being used to refer to males who are the opposite of "metrosexuals" -- that is, retrosexuals are straight men who, according to one source, "don't know the difference between teal and aqua, and frankly don't give a damn."







Posted: Thu - April 15, 2004 at 09:24 AM          

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