Gay relationships are here to stay, whatever people may say

A RECENT ballot identified Cardinal Keith O’Brian as the UK’s most bigoted man. The Cardinal must be made aware that he cannot sit on his laurels. He has a contender – I refer to your correspondent, Maxwell Laurie and his contribution (Yorkshire Post, November 9), in which he fulminated against gay marriage.

Mr Laurie needs to be reminded of a few things, the most important being that gay relationships have been around for thousands of years and that they are here to stay.

I cannot imagine why Mr Laurie thinks that gay men can’t explain menstruation to their children – has he no experience of close family relationships and, for that matter, how does he think that widowers manage? I also fail to understand why Elton John is singled out for particular criticism. Can I appeal to your readers to “live and let live” and not to immediately condemn things they either don’t understand or haven’t experienced?

The world has been going to hell in a handcart since time immemorial, yet the promised cataclysm has yet to happen.

We have survived votes for women, the collapse of empire, the legalisation of divorce in Ireland, and I’m a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here. In contrast, gay marriage doesn’t seem much of a problem.

From: Maxwell Laurie, Cockfield, County Durham.

Dear me! Where Brian Sheridan (Yorkshire Post, November 12) got the idea that the Catholic church is “obsessed with sex” he does not make clear, nor does he offer evidence. But then, he does tend to dismiss inconvenient matters out of hand.

That “couple” and “copulation” have the same root meaning of sexual union is a fact, not a “tenuous argument”. And, would you Adam-and-Eve-it, sexual union is a lot older than the Catholic church and rather essential to the human race. He suggests that homosexuality does not preclude sexual 
union. Many beside myself will 
be intrigued to hear how he explains this – other than by 
the fudge of so-called 
bisexuality. And how on Earth can he maintain that parenting has nothing to do with sex? Except, of course, on one occasion about 2,000 years ago. Mr Sheridan could always seek the opinion of the next Archbishop of Canterbury.

From: Iain Morris, Caroline Street, Saltaire, Bradford.

following on from Conservative MP Gary Streeter (Yorkshire Post, November 9), 
as a confirmed Anglican 
educated by the Moravians at Fulneck in Pudsey, I had the 
very enjoyable privilege as a member of Bradford Interfaith Society some time ago of 
visiting the Shree Hindu 
Temple in the city and the Orthodox synagogue in 
Shipley. I once heard a rabbi on Saturday morning on BBC radio say “there are many ways to god and there are as many forms of Judaism as there are Jews”.