Sir, – Marriage never was primarily about creating an environment for the rearing of children.
When marriage was ordained by God aeons ago (Genesis 2:24 ) it was about a man and a woman leaving their parents and cleaving to each other – becoming “one flesh”. There was no mention of rearing children in the mandate.
As the Evangelical Alliance Ireland stated in its submission to the Convention on the Constitution, “the present proposals for same-sex marriage, however, far from advancing an inclusive civil society, represent a mirror-image of an earlier religious hegemony, constitute an aeon-changing adjustment of human culture, and are not accompanied by evidence which shows that this is not a socially retrograde step”. – Yours, etc,
NOEL McCUNE,
Newry,
Co Down.
Sir, – I, for one, believe we should protect the traditional definition of marriage.
As per Deuteronomy 21 10:14, upon finding the ideal specimen of womankind after battle, all I should have to do is shave her, cut her nails, throw away her clothes and allow her a month to mourn her parents, who I have undoubtedly just killed, and then she will be my wife.
Anything else would be redefinition. – Yours, etc,
CILLIAN BRACKEN
Douglas,
Cork.
Sir,– I was pleased to see the heading of your main editorial "The meaning of marriage" (February 9th), having read so many conflicting letters on the subject recently.
I assumed that the article would be a serious and responsible summary of the arguments on this controversial subject. However I was shocked to read, in the very first paragraph, the extraordinary statement that “in modern western society marriage and the formation of families . . . are no longer the same thing”.
This was presented as fact without any discussion or evidence.
In the society that I have lived in for over 80 years, marriage is very much “the formation of families”.
A bit further on I read that “marriage is now . . . a public statement of personal commitment between two people who love each other”, again without any evidence or argument. But it is a fact that there are all sorts of rules that have been around for thousands of years, for very good reasons, that proclaim the opposite.
For example, one may not marry a sibling or close relative; one may not marry a person under a certain age; one may not marry a person that is already married; and one may not marry a person of the same sex.
These rules apply to all, so cannot be considered to be “discriminatory”.
Nowadays we may regret that many more young people are opting for “relationships” rather than marriage so we may be tempted to do drastic things about the rules, but please let us consider the facts as they are, and please do try to present these facts as they are before we do anything too drastic. – Yours, etc,
W J MURPHY,
Malahide,
Co Dublin.