I've stated this before, but I'll reiterate it again: I don't think anybody should take the creation account literally. It was designed to be understood by peasants with no education; it was written in a way that even a child could understand. Would it be nice for there to be "Bible 2.0" with modernized language, where stuff like "The Universe was created in 6 days, etc." translated to "The Universe was created from manipulation of quantum fluctuations and then, on a specific planet that was chosen seemingly at random, the process of evolution began and culminated in a sapient species that, unique among the rest, was self-aware. Through their intellect they gained dominion over the rest of the plants and animals and could choose to act how they pleased yet consistently chose violent actions."? Yes, that'd be pretty nifty. However, the point isn't to convey scientific principles, it's just to define a starting point. Genesis should [i]probably[/i] not be taken literally, and as such probably isn't sufficient for refuting gay marriage. However, regarding the...[quote]an affirmation recorded in a surviving copy of a copy of an amateur copy of an amateur copy of a version of a translation of a 40 year old non eyewitnesses spread around via word of mouth account of something apparently said by an itinerant apocalyptic prophet 200 decades ago[/quote]...bit, I have to protest. Yes, obviously the original manuscripts are copies. However, scribes (those that copied and passed down scripture) held one of the most important jobs in society. They preserved the religious texts. In addition, we have roughly 24,000 copies throughout various languages, which correlate so accurately that they are all 99.5% the same. It would be very easy to discern false information among those copies, since the entire NT was written within approximately 70 years within Jesus' death. We also have access to a partial original document of John. Someone mentioned that if we disregard the NT as textually inaccurate, we must also throw out Socrates. Within 100 years of the original writing of the New Testament, we have access to 5600 copies, which are 99.5% accurate. The next most accurate piece of literature is Homer's Illiad, with 643 copies within the first 100 years at 95% accuracy. No other text bears such accuracy. Plato, Sophocles, Aristotle, etc. don't even come close to having the same number of copies, and their accuracy isn't even worth measuring due to the limited number of texts. Fundamentally, this just doesn't come down to the Bible being "a copy of a copy of a copy", because the NT is the most textually well-preserved document in ancient history.