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nurseduke's review against another edition
2.0
I enjoyed hearing his perspective and his story, and I am thankful he shared his experience. However, I disagreed with his starting point “one of our deepest shared values is that it is not good to be alone” and where he ended. It did not give much hope to single friends I know who do long for a mate, but God has yet to provide that. Are they missing out on a full life? Simply put my deepest shared value is not the fulfillment of sexual/relational intimacy, and since that seems to be the foundation of his argument, we part ways there.
He also says that sexuality is our identity and the essence of who we are as human beings, which I wholeheartedly disagree with. So it’s hard to continue on with his reasoning when from the get go we differ in very large ways.
The author is Jewish which is not a criticism at all, but since we do not have the same foundational beliefs, it was not as helpful of a book to me, as I had anticipated.
kendalljo's review
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
4.0
I was really quite impressed with this book, to be honest. Michaelson started it with affirmatives from the Bible. Then, he went on to discuss the 7 verses used to justify homophobia in a manner entirely new to me. Instead of doing any kind of broad religious concepts, he actually took the verses directly as they were written in their original context and essentially proved how justified homophobia isn't justified at all. It was a good quick read. There were some minor points throughout I might not have fully agreed with, but nothing bad seeing as they were typically very minor side points. Glad this website recommended it to me.
danperlman's review
3.0
An interesting blend of logic, linguistics and speculation that lays out the case for gay equality based on Judeo-Christian religious values, and a re-reading of scripture. I realize that it's a non-fiction book, and the author has points to make, but that doesn't mean it couldn't have been written in a far more interesting manner. It's basically pretty pedantic. And, despite that I think that his overall point is a good one, some of his analyses fall flat - he lays out the case that lesbians are excluded from many religious proscriptions because the original language of scripture uses masculine forms of words and not feminine. But anyone who has spent any time studying languages knows that most languages that have gender specific forms use the masculine when referring to both men and women in the aggregate. He also looks specifically at the languages that the Old (or as he puts it, Hebrew) Testament and New Testament "were written in". Problem is, the old testament was written in a combination of Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek and the new was written entirely in Greek - so in some, if not all of the cases, certainly in his references to the new testament, he's working off of a version that was already a translation. Regardless, it's a worthwhile read, and certainly far easier than some of the weightier tomes that have tackled the same subject at length.
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