I have searched the Bible for a message of hatred for the gay lifestyle and cannot find it. Yet Bob Bethel ("Bible denounces gay relationships," Oct. 31) seems to see it all over the place.
When I read the Bible (at least the Old Testament), I find a message of love. Not to mention many Christians tend to eat shrimp and bacon, so Leviticus is kind of off-limits. Christ said to the adulteress: Go, and sin no more (leaving the stone throwers with no one to kill). To the Samaritans, pariahs to Jews of the day, he reached out again in love. But to the hypocrites he said: Woe to thee.
First Corinthians 6:9 uses two words that are not even agreed upon by Bible scholars to be speaking of gay men.
One, arsenokoites, probably means male prostitute, not gay man, but the word is only found in a few places anywhere so no one really knows what Paul meant. The other, malakos, might mean any number of things from pederasty to a weak soldier.
Why didn't Paul use kinaidos, which meant homosexual relationships? Maybe because that just wasn't what he was talking about.
The Bible is a book of God's love for us, not a book of hate. The greatest problem Christians — and yes, I am one — have nowadays is that non-Christians see us as haters. They see people trying so hard to make God's word into a book of sexual morality that they cannot recognize his love for them through all the blather about gay lifestyles.
I've searched the Bible for this hate. I cannot find it. So my message to the gay men and women out there is this: God loves you. Tell those haters out there to: Go, and sin no more. And while you're at it: Vote for love, not hate.
JONATHAN LLOYD
Valley Falls