On Friday’s “Pray In Jesus Name” program, Gordon Klingenschmitt was trying to make the case that male-on-male sexual assault in the military has increased as a result of the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and, in doing so, pointed to former Petty Officer Third Class Brian Lewis, who testified last year about having been assaulted when he served in the Navy.
Of course, the assault against Lewis took place back in 2000, more than a decade before DADT was repealed, so we are not sure how that helps to prove Klingenschmitt’s point. Nonetheless, he demanded that the military reinstate DADT in order to push gay people “back in the closet, especially if they’re so flagrant that they want to violate one another when they’re openly serving”:
For some reason, Klingenschmitt also decided to take a shot at Right Wing Watch, accusing us of misquoting the Bible in a post we wrote back in July in which we responded to a statement that he had made when he said that Islam was a demonic religion because it required women who were raped to marry their attackers.
We pointed out that, according to Deuteronomy 22:28-29, the Bible also contained such a requirement, but now Klingenschmitt is accusing us of leveling “false accusations” against the Bible by misquoting and “twisting” it.
Citing Deuteronomy 22: 25-26, Klingenschmitt claims that the Bible requires rapists to be put to death, which he asserts proves that we are lying:
But if out in the country a man happens to meet a young woman pledged to be married and rapes her, only the man who has done this shall die. Do nothing to the woman; she has committed no sin deserving death
The verse Klingenschmitt cited only applies to a man who rapes a woman who is pledged to be married, while the very next passage says that if the woman is a virgin who is not pledged to be married, then her rapist must marry her:
If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, he shall pay her father fifty shekels of silver. He must marry the young woman, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives.
It seems that the only person who is “twisting the Scriptures” here is Klingenschmitt.
