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11 Things The Bible Bans, But You Do Anyway

1. Round haircuts. See you in Hell, Beatles. and/or kids with bowl cuts,
surfer cuts or (my favorite) butt cuts. Leviticus 19:27 reads "You shall not
round off the side-growth of your heads nor harm the edges of your beard."

2. Football. At least, the pure version of football, where you play with a
pigskin. The modern synthetic footballs are ugly and slippery anyways.
Leviticus 11:8, which is discussing pigs, reads "You shall not eat of their
flesh nor touch their carcasses; they are unclean to you."
And you're doubly breaking that if you wake up, eat some sausage then go
throw around the football. Or go to the county fair and enter a greased pig
catching contest.

3. Fortune telling. Before you call a 900 number (do people still call 900
numbers, by the way?), read your horoscope or crack open a fortune cookie,
realize you're in huge trouble if you do.
Leviticus 19:31 reads "Do not turn to mediums or spiritists; do not seek
them out to be defiled by them. I am the Lord your God." The penalty for
that? Check Leviticus 20:6: "As for the person who turns to mediums and to
spiritists, to play the harlot after them, I will also set My face against
that person and will cut him off from among his people."
Seems like a lifetime of exile is a pretty harsh penalty for talking to
Zoltar.

4. Pulling out. The Bible doesn't get too much into birth control. it's
clearly pro-populating but, back when it was written, no one really
anticipated the condom or the sponge, so those don't get specific bans.
But. pulling out does. One of the most famous sexual-oriented Bible verses.
the one that's used as anti-masturbation rhetoric. is actually anti-pulling
out.
It's Genesis 38:9-10: "Onan knew that the offspring would not be his; so
when he went in to his brother's wife, he wasted his seed on the ground in
order not to give offspring to his brother. But what he did was displeasing
in the sight of the Lord; so He took his life also."
Yep - pull out and get smote. That's harsh.

5. Tattoos. No tattoos. Leviticus 19:28 reads, "You shall not make any cuts
in your body for the dead nor make any tattoo marks on yourselves: I am the
Lord."
Not even a little butterfly on your ankle. Or Thug Life across your abdomen.
Or even, fittingly enough, a cross.

6. Polyester, or any other fabric blends. The Bible doesn't want you to wear
polyester. Not just because it looks cheap. It's sinfully unnatural.
Leviticus 19:19 reads, "You are to keep My statutes. You shall not breed
together two kinds of your cattle; you shall not sow your field with two
kinds of seed, nor wear a garment upon you of two kinds of material mixed
together."
Check the tag on your shirt right now. Didn't realize you were mid-sin at
this exact second, did you? (Unless you checked the tag by rolling off your
neighbor's wife while you two were having anal sex in the middle of robbing
a blind guy. Then your Lycra-spandex blend is really the least of your
problems.)

7. Divorce. The Bible is very clear on this one: No divorcing. You can't do
it. Because when you marry someone, according to Mark 10:8, you "are no
longer two, but one flesh." And, Mark 10:9 reads, "What therefore God has
joined together, let no man separate."
Mark gets even more hardcore about it a few verses later, in Mark 10:11-12,
"And He said to them, 'Whoever divorces his wife and marries another woman
commits adultery against her; and if she herself divorces her husband and
marries another man, she is committing adultery.'"

8. Letting people without testicles into church. Whether you've been
castrated or lost one or two balls to cancer isn't important. The Bible
doesn't get that specific. It just says you can't pray.
Deuteronomy 23:1 reads (this is the God's Word translation, which spells it
out better), "A man whose testicles are crushed or whose penis is cut off
may never join the assembly of the Lord."
Oh, and the next verse says that if you're a bastard, the child of a
bastard. or even have a great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandchild
of a bastard, you can't come to church or synagogue either. Deuteronomy 23:2
reads, "No one of illegitimate birth shall enter the assembly of the Lord;
none of his descendants, even to the tenth generation, shall enter the
assembly of the Lord."

9. Wearing gold. 1 Timothy 2:9 doesn't like your gold necklace at all. Or
your pearl necklace. Or any clothes you're wearing that you didn't get from
Forever 21, Old Navy or H&M.
"Likewise, I want women to adorn themselves with proper clothing, modestly
and discreetly, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly
garments."

10. Shellfish. Leviticus 11:10 reads, "But whatever is in the seas and in
the rivers that does not have fins and scales among all the teeming life of
the water, and among all the living creatures that are in the water, they
are detestable things to you." And shellfish is right in that wheelhouse.
Leviticus 11 bans a TON of animals from being eaten (it's THE basis for
Kosher law); beyond shellfish and pig, it also says you can't eat camel,
rock badger, rabbit, eagle, vulture, buzzard, falcon, raven, crow, ostrich,
owl, seagull, hawk, pelican, stork, heron, bat, winged insects that walk on
four legs unless they have joints to jump with like grasshoppers (?), bear,
mole, mouse, lizard, gecko, crocodile, chameleon and snail.
Sorry if that totally ruins your plans to go to a rock badger eat-off this
weekend.

11. Your wife defending your life in a fight by grabbing your attacker's
genitals. No joke. Deuteronomy actually devotes two verses to this exact
scenario: Deuteronomy 25:11-12.
"If two men, a man and his countryman, are struggling together, and the wife
of one comes near to deliver her husband from the hand of the one who is
striking him, and puts out her hand and seizes his genitals, then you shall
cut off her hand; you shall not show pity."
That's impossible to misinterpret. Ladies, if your husband is getting
mugged, make sure to kick the mugger in the pills. Do not do the grip and
squeeze (no matter what "Miss Congeniality" might advise). Or your hand
needs to be cut off.


As a final note, I know that nine of these 11 cite the Old Testament, which
Christianity doesn't necessarily adhere to as law.

To which I say: If you're going to ignore the section of Leviticus that bans
about tattoos, pork, shellfish, round haircuts, polyester and football, how
can you possibly turn around and quote Leviticus 18:22 ("You shall not lie
with a male as one lies with a female; it is an abomination.") as
irrefutable law?

But that's me trying to introduce logic to religious fanaticism (or, at
least, trying to counter some mix of ignorance, bigotry and narcissism with
logic). And I should probably know better.