Dear Editor:
Pastor Dirks’ reprehensible opinions and actions against a minority group that is just beginning to get recognition as legitimate equals in society reminds me of a Stephen Weinberg quote: “Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.”
The book that has Leviticus 20:13 also states the earth is the centre of the universe, with the sun, moon and stars set in a “firmament,” which revolves around the earth. The same book states the four corners of the world can be seen from a tall tree and it took five days to create and populate the earth, but only one day to create the vastness of the universe with trillions of stars, some much larger than our own sun. So much wrong in one book. A Google search will find hundreds more “misstatements” in the book. This is the book that Pastor Dirks gets his sick ideas from. A whole industry has grown up attempting to justify the horrors and errors in the “good book”: apologetics. I agree that there is much to apologize for, the treatment of “outsiders” is but one example.
I am a hetero male. I have no desire to stomp or denigrate anyone, but Pastor Dirks comes close.
Robert Granewall, New Westminster
