So Jennifer Knapp was on Larry King Live recently. You can check out her entire interview on YouTube. If you don't know who Jennifer Knapp is, I blogged about her a short while back - in essence, she's a Christian music artist who came out as a lesbian recently.
All in all, props to Jennifer Knapp for rocking the interview and to Larry King for pretty much mopping the floor with Bob the Pastor. Try not to cringe when for some reason or another CNN decided to bring in Ted Haggard (ex-evangelical pastor who was caught having sex with a male gay prostitute) during the second part of this interview. If anything, I think he eroded some of the credibility of the argument.
I actually laughed out loud when Larry King asked Bob the Pastor "Did you make a choice for heterosexuality" and he answered "I did!". Larry King goes on to ask, "How did you do that?... How did you know you like women?". 10 points for Larry King!
On a more academic side of things, what was interesting for me was when Jennifer questioned the fundamental translations of certain Greek words - a language obviously not our own. The Greek words that have been translated into English to mean homosexuality include words like "arsenokoitai", "malakoi" and "paiderasste" and indeed there has been rising debates on how to interpret these words, given their historical context, the etymology of words and so on and so forth. These 3 different words were used in various verses in various contexts, yet today, it all translates into one word: homosexuality. I'm no seminary scholar, but that raises questions and rightfully so and I'm glad she talked about it.
All in all, I thought Jennifer summed it up perfectly when she asked Bob the Pastor:
"What separates that (the "sin" of homosexuality") out as so grievous to you that we have to sit here and have this type of conversation?"
Go watch the interview if you have some time.
On a more personal side of things, this whole Jennifer Knapp thing has absolutely blown me over. It wasn't so long ago that I decided that faith was something I wanted to explore again. Mid April swings around and suddenly my internal grapplings with faith and sexuality are suddenly up for public debate. Not that they weren't before, but this is the first time a Christian music artist has openly come out. The rhetoric and discussions very much remain the same, but putting a more public face to the debate, compounded by my own personal sensitivities have made it that much more momentous. for me at least. A fellow MBA student asked me recently if I could choose, would I still choose to be gay. Well, like Jennifer Knapp, I told him, I feel very blessed to be who I am and no I wouldn't change it.
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