Letter – Hate crime insanity

Talk about it

To the editor:

“Pastor in jail for preaching the Bible!” That will soon be a headline somewhere in our country and maybe even in Alexandria, since the House passed on Thursday, April 30, a plan to create a federal “hate crimes” plan that will provide special protections to homosexuals and others with alternative sexual choices, but leave Christian pastors open to prosecution should their teachings be linked to any subsequent offense, by anyone, against a “gay” person.

This means that if I should preach from 1 Corinthians 6:9, or 1 Timothy 1:10, or from Romans 1:24-32, or from Leviticus 18:22-24, or from Leviticus 20:13-16 and mention that along with all of the other sins that the Bible mentions, the sin of sodomy is to be repented from, and somebody hears my message in person or over the radio and decides to help a homosexual person repent of his sin a little too aggressively, then I will be guilty of committing a hate crime, no matter how much I emphasize in my sermon the need to love the sinner.

The reason that we have this insanity, and I include in this insanity the new law in Iowa as of April 3 that legalizes same sex marriage, is that the Bible has been cast aside as a standard for moral behavior in our country. There are no more absolutes. If same sex marriage is allowed today because there is no standard for making it illegal as the judges decided in Iowa, why not marriage to my horse, or marriage to my neighbor’s 3-year-old son or daughter, or marriage to three women and four men? Perhaps I better not preach against such sins as I just mentioned or my horse might sue me and have me put in jail!

Pastor Darryl Knappen

First Baptist Church,

Alexandria, MN

Tags: opinion, letters, pastor, darryl, knappen