Sir;
As an Irish Catholic, you may presume that I hold marriage in respect. Looked at from a practcal, and philosophical perspective, it is what everything else in our lives is: A Form of Relationship. Some forms of relationship are sterile. Some produce children, and hope for the future. Rather than contend on the question of whether marriage could possibly be between like sexes; consider why they would want to marry. Why would gay people pick up a form that clearly does not work for many of us, and try to make it work for them? Marriage is the form. Love is the relationship. Why on earth, if they have the relationship, do they need a form that would be empty without the relationship? They bow down before the society, the state, and their neighbors when they accept our forms as their own. It means there is nothing revolutionary in homosexuality. It means that if given a chance, they behave in almost every possible fashion as though their values were their own, which makes them conservative, even reactionary, and ultimately, useless in the battle for change that grips society. If a person expects to have children, the a formal relationship tends to protect the rights of the children. What rights does marriage between Gays support that each is not in a possition already to support? Does it not seem strange that grown people must rely on their mates for their income, their insurance, and their property rights? I think if Gay people have love they already have the best part of marriage. I don't think they should have special rights because they do not make the ultimate sacrifice of time and effort required to raise children. They do not need the family rate at the Zoo. They are not wrong, where everyone seeks an advantage to seek an advantage. Nor are they wrong to seek stable relationships. They are not wrong to seek marriage even; but they do a service to society in doing so. In accepting marriage they accept the form and formalism of society, that without acceptance, would be totally dead and empty of meaning. You are not giving them anything by allowing them to marry except a chance to state in public that they are conservative, not threatening, and not revolutionary. I think it is so much nonsense.

Excellent column. Would that the ordinary citizen felt free to utter similar thoughts. Excellent column: this really needs to be said.