Different postbag

Alice Wyllie’s article about the investigative journalist Lydia Cacho and her work to expose the major problem of international sex trafficking (23 August) made chilling reading, suggesting that the problem of sexual exploitation is worse than it has ever been.

Now The Scotsman has informed readers of the horrors which are being perpetrated globally, I look forward to a flood of letters supporting Ms Cacho’s work from the correspondents who usually obsess about gay marriage.

“Society’s ongoing task,” she says, “is to reinvent love and eroticism without violence.” This would seem a far worthier cause to take up than persecuting consensual and loving ­relationships between same-sex couples.

(Dr) Mary Brown

Dalvenie Road

Banchory

Paul Brownsey misrepresents the teachings of the Catholic Church when he states that it “regards homosexual men and women as ‘objectively disordered’” (Letters, 23 August).

The Catechism states that 
“homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered” and that 
such an “inclination is objectively disordered”. I’m sure Mr Brownsey would agree that the difference is significant.

Ian Maxfield

Roberton

Biggar, South Lanarkshire

I’m heartily sick of groups claiming rights, especially the unending futile campaign for the “right” to gay marriage in church. Henry Kinloch (Letters, 23 August) helpfully states the blindingly obvious (except to politicians) solution: complete disconnection between church and state.

Religion is concerned with variable belief; government with fixed legality. Never the incompatible twain should meet.

As Mr Kinloch points out, civil union must be the recognised legal requirement; an additional church ceremony should be an optional extra.

However, no-one seems to be addressing certain obvious difficulties in presenting this as a right. Principally, how can that be the case if churches are allowed to refuse, as proposed by the Scottish Government? What happens if they all refuse?

I have come across no mention of church or faith membership. The “right” to a church ceremony would suggest that devout heathens could insist on the services of any Jewish, Muslim or Christian church.

Neil Barber (Letters, same day) raises the commonly expressed desire of gay people for “no more than equality” in this matter. As I recall, the original equality requested was the use of the word “marriage”. Renaming the present civil ceremony would achieve that immediately.

Whatever the outcome, the government should seize this opportunity to free both church and state from interference with each other.

Robert Dow

Ormiston Road

Tranent, East Lothian