Madam, - Breda O'Brien (Opinion, November 13th) writes: "No one likes to think that they are bigoted or prejudiced, but that is no protection from being either".
How well she demonstrates this truth. She is happy to grant same-sex couples more flexible arrangements regarding inheritance and other legal issues - but let them not seek to emulate heterosexual marriage, which according to Ms O'Brien, has existed in all places and time "as a means of regulating sexuality, and of ensuring that those who made babies stayed around to love and rear those babies. Marriage increased stability in society."
Well, my word - so that's why my parents married: to regulate their sexuality, to make sure that they both stayed around while they made babies and to increase stability in society. How thoughtful of them. And I thought that it had something to do with love.
Same-sex couples love each other. They wish to express this socially and spiritually, before God and humankind, like their heterosexual brothers and sisters, in a marriage ceremony. This is where the story begins, in love, not at the other end - in Ms O'Brien calls the "common good". Heterosexuals do not marry for the "common good", but for their own good. I have not met any who married to increase stability in society.
It is not the duty of same-sex couples such as Ann Louise Gilligan and Katherine Zappone to consider the effect of their marriage on heterosexuals any more than heterosexuals consider homosexuals when they marry. They are both prompted by the same love and their desire to express it in marriage. The common good should serve all and not just the most common form of relationship.
As for Ms O'Brien's concern about same-sex couples adopting children, she must know that marriage of any kind does not confer the right to adoption. This is overseen by regulated agencies who consider both the positive and negative contribution of an adopting couple - gay or straight. She thinks that same-sex marriage would prove "a radical experiment to conduct on children". But we are all subjects of a radical experiment by our parents. There is no evidence to suggest that the radicalism of a same-sex experiment is any less beneficial than the radicalism of the heterosexual one. - Yours etc.,
DECLAN KELLY, Lower Exchange Street, Dublin 8.