Gay revisionism

I charged Dr Mary Brown with projecting her own spiritual ­beliefs on to Jesus when she claimed that his message was about “living in harmony with the Divine Creator and Her creation.”

She responded (Letters, 2 August) by making the irrelevant point that Jesus said nothing about gay relationships, before claiming that Jesus’ words to those about to stone an adulterer: “Let him who has no sin cast the first stone,” actually meant “they would like to do the same if they could”.

Jesus did not speak on many moral issues, but Christian teaching is not just based on the words of Jesus, who himself referred to other scriptures in his teaching, but on the entire Biblical revelation. To interpret the lack of a record of Jesus speaking about homosexual sex as some sort of tacit approval is again just gratuitous revisionism.

To quote NT Wright, Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at St Andrews University, “Paganism ancient and modern has always found this ethic, and this belief, ridiculous and incredible. But the biblical witness is scarcely confined to a few verses in St Paul.

“Jesus’s own stern denunciation of sexual immorality would certainly have carried, to his hearers, a clear implied rejection of all sexual behaviour outside heterosexual monogamy.

“This isn’t a matter of private response to Scripture but of the uniform teaching of the whole Bible, of Jesus himself, and of the entire Christian tradition.”

I must also present myself as counter example to Dr Brown’s assertion that many over-35s in long-term relationships view putting the top on the toothpaste as more important than sex.

Richard Lucas

Broomyknowe

Edinburgh