Christians who base criticism of homosexuality on the Bible ignore the complex reality of history

REV Ivan Foster ( Write Back, November 12) got me thinking. Does God really hate homosexuals, or is it just those of his servants who are stuck in the literal reading of the Old Testament, rather than fully understanding the spirit of the New Testament, who hate them?

The Bible texts which condemn homosexuality usually also condemn adultery, temple prostitution and all other forms of sexual licence, because these behaviours were associated with pagan temple worship and hated practices of idolatry of the surrounding communities of Old and New Testament Judea.

Ezra and Nehemiah launched a purge against foreign wives and children of Jews in Judea; fearful that they would introduce foreign religious practices, they campaigned to drive them out. This continued a policy of ethnic cleansing documented, and approved of, in many places in the Old Testament.

Homosexuality, in this xenophobic society, was considered to be a foreign, Greek custom. The Jews were at war with the process of Hellenisation of their culture in the Second Temple period, so they were bound to reject any thing Greek as against their God.

Nowadays, we recognise that God creates homosexual people, just as he creates homosexual animals in nature. They are not to be punished, nor prosecuted, in a civilised society.

We should be repelled by the religious bigots who would consign them to hellfire, just as we now recognise ethnic cleansing in the name of God is an unacceptably vile Old Testament practice.

The widening vistas of the New Testament call for a rethinking of attitudes. Perhaps Rev Foster and his co-religionists should get off the judgement seat and leave that to God.

NICK CANNING

Coleraine, Co Londonderry