TADHG O'BRIEN,
Sir, - The Equality Authority wants children "snatched from the arms of their natural fathers and given to gay men and women" according to John Waters (June 3rd). I'll leave it to the Equality Authority to clarify whether or not that is their wish. However, I suspect Mr Waters might accumulate more support for his cause if he could find a way of furthering it without resorting to such shameless scaremongering.
In the same edition is a letter from Ivo O'Sullivan suggesting that since, she claims, most of us in this country are Christian, our politicians should reject the recommendations of the Equality Authority to end discrimination against homosexual and bisexual citizens. Is she actually suggesting we should enact our laws in accordance with scripture? That would constitute a theocratic state. And which version of Christianity should our laws reflect? Should condoms be banned? Divorce? Should sex before marriage become an indictable offence? Eating meat on Fridays?
The Equality Authority has made a number of recommendations to end the last remaining pieces of discrimination embedded in our legal system against lesbian, gay and bisexual people. They suggest the law treat same-sex couples no differently than straight couples. By that rationale a gay couple wishing to adopt would be subject to the same vetting and rigorous background checks as a straight couple, but they should not be barred solely on the basis of sexual orientation.
Ms O'Sullivan argues that these recommendations might be insensitive to Muslims. Ireland has a much larger population of gays than of Muslims. In fact, there are more gay people in Ireland than there are people with red hair. They are siblings, sons, daughters and parents. Gay people are employers and employees and occupy every area of society. I do not accept that such a wide and varied cross-section of Irish society should be discriminated against in order to ensure our laws are compatible with a minority's religious dogma. - Yours, etc.,
TADHG O'BRIEN,
President,
Lesbian, Gay
& Bisexual Society,
Trinity College Dublin.