There is a pattern in the religious right to use (misuse) religious texts and traditions to support their revanchavist, fascist agenda. It is important to understand this and have the tools to push back, because it is important to not let the religious right have a "copywright" on religion and spirituality. Real spirituality has always been about connecting better with one's fellow human beings, and becoming a more charitable person, and false political religion has always been about power and control, the opposite of real spirituality.
In particular, a tragedy is how (some, not all, but some) (largely white supremacist) Evanglicals will twist and distort sacred texts for their own agenda, and use their false understandings of traditional literature to promote for example homophobia. If an LGBT person, especially a young person, hears from a religious authority that they are an "abomination" for instance, because they are gay, that causes untold emotional and spiritual harm, that often results in someone committing suicide, or turning to drugs or alcohol to cope. As an openly bisexual person myself, in my younger days I had to deal with much bigotry from various quarters that tried to use intentional misunderstandings of religion to promote homophobic agendas. I am fortunate in a way because as practioner of Reform Judaism, I don't run into homophobia within my own tradition like I would if I were a practictioner of some forms of Christianity, where homophobia is much more widespread, due in many cases, ironically, to Evangelicals (or some of them in any case) taking Jewish literature and misrepresenting it for their own purposes.
A well-known passage in Leviticus, part of the Torah, that the religious right likes to misuse for its own bigoted purposes, is a text that as sometimes translated, reads, "do not lie with a man, as you lie with a woman, for that is an abomination". This is a part of ancient legal codes found in the Torah that deal with cleanlines rules that often do not apply to our current day, rules for example which call upon women to ritually cleanse (in what is called a Mikvah) following their period, something which only very few women do in our current day. To keep this brief, Rabbis in the Conservative denomination of Judaism (which is less traditional than Orthodox Judaism but more traditional than Reform Judaism) did a deep dive into the context of this controversial passage several decades ago, and determined that this was in the category of kosher rules ("kosher" being religious rules but not necessarily moral rules, rules such as, for example, not eating shell fish) dealing with cleanliness, specific to that period and place of the Iron Age in which this was written, and was not in the category of universal moral laws such as not stealing or not coveting someone else's spouse. Specifically, this disputed passage in Leviticus referred to one particular type of male-on-male sexual intimacy and did not remark upon or prohibit other forms of sexual intimacy other than this one particular type, nor did it comment on for example female-on-female sexual relations. And, again, even that one prohibition regarding that one particular form of male sexual intimacy was motivated by a desire to prevent the spread of disease, in a time period where there was little understanding of disease, and only the vaguest knowledge of how to prevent its spread. (In a similar vein, there were rules about avoiding touching dead bodies, and needing to ritually cleanse oneself if one encountered a dead body, to again prevent the spread of diseases.) So, long story short, the prohibition in Leviticus concerning itself with one particular type of male sexual intimacy which was motivated by a concern with preventing STD's, is a very far cry from saying "gay people are an abomination" which is what the religious right likes to twist this into. And the modern day application of this rule would be the self-evident understandings we in modernity have about obviously limiting sexual contact to consenting adults (of whatever gender they might be), being smart about practicing safe sex with partners that we may not know very well, and, just in general, treating ourselves and those with whom we have intimate relations, in a respectful manner. It is common sense stuff really, and it is sad the way the religious right takes texts written in the Iron Age and creates whole new meanings out of those texts in order to promote their hateful agenda.
Read with care, there are a number of persons in the Tanakh (which is what is called the "Old Testament" in Christianity) that from the context of the text we would consider to be representations of LGBT characters. Examples include: Mordecai (a relative of Queen Esther who is referred to with male pronouns but is also said to have nursed Esther as an infant, indicating an example of a non-binary or FTM transgender person), the prophet Daniel (whom many scholars believe to have been a eunuch in the Babylonian court, which is a close ancient world correlary to a non-binary, MTF type of transgender individual), as well as the Judge Deborah and her female companion Yael, who in the Book of Judges helped to repel an invasion from a rival tribe in the very early days of the Hebrew tribes prior to the establishment of the Kingdoms of Judah and Israel, and from the context, seem to be an example of a lesbian or bisexual couple. The list goes on - most famously perhaps, the early Judean King David is well known to have been at least bisexual, due to a relationship prior to his becoming King, with Jonathan, the son of King Saul, David's predessor. Of course these are literary characters, so it is a bit like arguing about (for instance) the sexuality of Sherlock Holmes - there can never be a final answer to questions of literary interpretation. But the point is, given an unbiased reading of ancient Jewish literature, it is clear that heternormativity was not, well, as normative in that culture and time period, as the religious right would like us to believe.
There are other issues beyond LGBT issues, in which the religious right intentionally misrepresents sacred literature for their own bigoted purposes, racism being another prime example of how sacred literature is falsely used to promote a hateful agenda on the part of the religious right. It is important to be educated on these issues so we can push back against the narrative of the religious right. "Any religion without love and compassion is false" as a character says in Stephen King's short story "Children of the Corn". This needs to be the starting point when dealing with attacks from the religious right, which cannot be allowed to hold a monopoly on religious discussions in the public square, which would be a bit like letting tobacco company executives run public health. Tobacco use is precisely the opposite of promoting health, just as misuing religious literature to promote hate is the precise opposite of real spirituality, in all of its varied and unique cultural manifestations.
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