Traditional church teachings on gay sexuality are "wrong, unjust and harmful," says a visiting author, psychologist and Christian who will speak this Sunday evening in Auckland.

Dr Stuart Edser is principal psychologist at Newcastle Psychology and Health, a small private practise in Australia. He was at one time a Catholic seminarian and has experience in pentecostal and evangelical churches.

He has recently written a book, Being Gay, Being Christian, which grew out of his own difficult path to acceptance of his homosexuality. "When I was a young gay man in denial of my own sexuality, I suffered
terribly at the hands of church teaching, inexorably leading me toward
self-hatred, depression and suicidality as these teachings infused my
life with a sense of guilt, shame and sin; all just for being gay."

"The church is trapped in a time warp regarding gay sexuality," Edser says. "I want the errors taught by the church that gay people are both sick
and sinful to be blasted away forever in the light of modern
scholarship that provides newer understandings of human sexuality... and Biblical interpretation."

Edser will speak at a meeting of the Metropolitan Community Church in Auckland this Sunday evening.