Gay Marriage

He is merely trying to get the Conservative Party to live with the times.

The struggle over the acceptance of homosexuality has been over for la long time. The culture has changed, and the churches will merely have to change the wording of the marriage service to exclude the procreation of the species as one of the purposes of marriage.

There was a time when it required some courage to want to change the law so that homosexual males could not be prosecuted or subject to blackmail. I was a member of the Homosexual Law Reform Society and the communications I received were marked “strictly private and confidential”.

We succeeded in our campaign when the Wolfenden Report was published and subsequently acted on by Parliament During my lifetime there has been a tremendous change in the culture on this and others subjects. The Conservative Party has had to be dragged into accepting changes that have already taken place. David Cameron merely tries to do that.

Geoffrey Bulmer, Billingham.

K MYERS (HAS, Dec 6) finds the notion of gay marriages ridiculous. But what I find ridiculous is that in the 21st Century our views on sex, sexuality, sexual orientation, other races, creeds, colours, cultures, the role of men and women is still dictated by those who created the human construct known as religion.

Religion was invented to justify forced marriages, the oppression and rape of women, child rape, the persecution and denial of rights to others, as well as to justify the oppression, enslavement, torture, murder, ethnic cleansing and the genocide of those who are either born different or don’t share their ignorant, crude, uncultured and narrow-minded beliefs.

CT Riley, Spennymoor.

WE should make the debate about all marriage – not just gay marriage.

Any marrying couple should be entitled to register their marriage as bound by the law prior to 1969 with regard to grounds and procedures for divorce, and any religious organisation should be enabled to specify that any marriage which it conducts should be so bound, requiring it to counsel couples accordingly.

Statute should specify that the Church of England is such a body unless the General Synod voted otherwise by a two-thirds majority in all three of its houses, with something similar for the Methodist and United Reformed Churches, which also exist pursuant to Acts of Parliament, as well as by amendment to the legislation relating to the restoration of the Catholic hierarchy.

Entitlement upon divorce should be fixed by statute at one per cent of the other party’s estate for each year of marriage, up to 50 per cent, with no entitlement for the petitioning party unless the other party’s fault be proved.

That would be a start, anyway.

The marital union of one man and one woman is a public good uniquely and in itself, and the taxation system, among so very many other instruments of public policy, ought to recognise that fact.

It ought to recognise marriage as a unique public good, to which civil partnerships (which, never having needed to be consummated, ought not to be confined to unrelated same-sex couples) are not comparable.

And it ought to recognise marriage as a public good in itself, whether or not there are children, a related but different public good of which other forms of recognition rightly exist.

David Lindsay, Lanchester.