Adventist head misguided in anti-gay theology

THE EDITOR, Sir:

HERE WE go again. The head of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Jamaica tells us that while he has no bias or discrimination against homosexual men, he wishes them to go to prison for 12 years at hard labour. For what? One act of anal intercourse – a not-unheard-of act within heterosexual, ‘sanctified’ marriages.

After all, years into doing the same act with the same person over and over, you may wish to try a different one with the same person. Twelve years in prison at hard labour if it is between two men, harming no one else, but fine between a man and woman?

And what kind of logic does this organism use in defence of this absurdly unchristian stance? All is done in defence of ‘morality’ and the family as conceived by God and revealed in the scripture. What kind of nonsense is this?

If you want to deal with immorality in Jamaica, how about lying and stealing? Eighty per cent of the island would be locked up. Is not adultery a sin? Only the fact that most Jamaicans are unmarried would keep lock-up at a dull roar in this regard.

What about his pretence of talking for Jesus? Did Jesus not teach compassion and forgiveness and humility and valuing others as much as self? When a woman caught in adultery was brought to him and he was asked whether she should be stoned to death, he answered, “Let he among you who is without sin cast the first stone.” No one did, and Jesus told the woman to go and sin no more.

ROOTED IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

Any spirit of Jesus in the good preacher? He is firmly rooted in the Old Testament, which, if taken literally, drips with nonsense from beginning to end. Genocide against non-Jewish groups taken as God’s will? All sex must be procreative in nature – for spilling his seed on the ground, God killed dear Onan for it. A trivial little seven-day narrative for the evolution of the entire universe meant to be a scientifically accurate view of creation?

Did not Jesus preach against hypocrisy when he said, “Judge not that ye be not judged, for with what judgment ye pronounce shall ye be judged?” Denial, projection and attack are the classic signs of self-deception. ROBERT TRIVERS trivers@rci.rutgers.edu Southfield, St Elizabeth