K HARSLEY claims (HAS, June 12) that “it is not fashionable....to be gay.”

Really? You could have fooled me. It seems to me in fact that you can scarcely pick a paper up these days or watch TV without having the subject thrust in your face.

There was some of it in TheNorthern Echo supplement on June 13: an interview with the actor Ian McKellen which seemed to be all about gay rights.

What about the rights of ordinary people for a change? Like those of the Christian couple who were recently heavily fined in Northern Ireland and threatened with prison merely for refusing to toe the politically correct pro-gay line.

Wasn’t that a gross infringement of their basic human rights? In fact it was probably a breach of one of the provisions of Magna Carta or the Atlantic Charter, the one about liberty of conscience.

Actually, despite the furore habitually kicked up by the powerful gay lobby, the vast majority of ordinary people bear homosexuals no active ill-will.

We just wish they would keep the subject of their private lives to themselves, because we’d much rather not know about it.

Tony Kelly, Crook.