... Madam, - The letter you published from the new Fine Gael councillor, Lucinda Creighton, yesterday (October 26th) and her remarks on the Holocaust absolutely beggar belief.
The farce which has just occurred in the EU Parliament was completely of the new Commission's own making by putting unsuitable people in unsuitable roles.
Of course no one has a right to say Mr Buttiglione cannot hold the views and opinions he does. Are we seriously meant to believe it is acceptable that a politician can have a different private view to the public role he is charged to uphold?
I thought that was called gross hypocrisy. Yet it seems the new Fine Gael councillor has no problem with that.
Are we seriously expected to believe that when efforts to give recognition for gay people to marry, adopt and have the same rights as heterosexual people were being debated, Mr Buttiglione would have given them his complete support?
That he would have fully backed proposals for the measures needed to allow women participate in the workforce without discrimination?
On this matter Fianna Fáil as always took the route of least principle but the Fine Gael MEPs should be ashamed of themselves. - Yours, etc.,
DESMOND FITZGERALD, Havannah Street,Canary Wharf, London.
Madam, - Cllr Creighton (October 27th) displays both amazing bad taste and naivety in daring to cite the Holocaust to condemn those who are opposed to thenomination of an orthodox Catholic as European Commissioner. Maybe Ms Creighton has forgotten that Jews did not go to the concentration camps alone. Among others they were joined by members of the gay community.
It is important to remember that the Holocaust was no aberration. It was the natural and industrialised conclusion to centuries of Christian-created anti-Semitism and homophobia. The Nazis relied on both ideology and mysticism to justify their mantra of hate. They created a culture of twisted irrationality and they did so within living memory.
Would Mr Buttiglione still be in the running if he had said that the Jews were all going to hell for having murdered Jesus?
Despite the appearance of some high-profile media personalities, the majority of gays have only just dared to raise their heads above the parapets.
They now have the protection of the law but are still subject to the effects of vicious, often violent and pernicious prejudice.
The values of equality and mutual respect remain but paper thin in the West.
To undo the centuries of evil perpetrated against the gay community involves more than sophistry from the church and its adherents.
To say something is wrong but not a crime does nothing but nurture the bile that can easily erupt into violence, both physical and legal. - Yours, etc.,
PAUL BOWLER, Meath Road, Bray, Co Wicklow.
Madam, - The Irish Times (October 26th) erroneously states that only two Irish MEPs indicated they would vote against the appointment of the EU Commission. I would point out that Ms Bairbre De Brún, curiously absent from Mr Mark Brennock's article, is an MEP, Irish, and the elected representative of over 100,000 Irish people and citizens.
She made clear her intention to vote against the appointments, yet was omitted from the article. - Is mise le meas,
JUSTIN MORAN, St James Avenue, Ballybough, Dublin 1.