I AM about as far from the views of Mr Overd (County Gazette, April 4) as it is possible to be.
For a start, I am a gay man: one of those Mr Overd enjoys ‘weaponising’ his Bible against.
I also do not consider that Mr Overd defines ‘Christianity’.
I am a Christian, too, but I do not read the Bible in the same way that Mr Overd does.
In our current society, it is the way he reads his Bible which creates problems for him, from our misguided police.
It is not the job of our police to involve themselves in scriptural hermeneutics. They are not competent to do so.
It is their job to ensure that we maintain our freedoms as citizens: and the greatest of those freedoms is the ‘Freedom of Speech’.
Far from shutting Mr Overd down, they should be allowing him to speak.
READ MORE: Another court case against street preacher Michael Overd collapses
Mr Overd is, simply, a Christian fundamentalist.
So, why are the police pursuing him? Who took ‘offence’ from his reading of the Bible, aloud?
I’m gay, and I wouldn’t, unless he was advocating Capital Punishment or criminalising me although, even then, I would point to his error in thinking that the Bible means what it says.
When studying in Durham in the early 1970s, a lecturer advised me to note: 'The Bible always says what it means: it does not always mean what it says.'
Good enough for me!
MARK DYER
Wellington
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