Equal respect

The Kirk’s legal questions committee worry about challenges in court over equal marriage, but they needn’t concern themselves because, apart from the legal right for religions to discriminate built into the new marriage act, there is something more important involved.

There are actual, real live 
people using this legislation, people who love each other and want publicly to declare their love and, by so doing, marry.

Has the committee considered why on earth any couple, of any gender, would want to be married by a church that doesn’t 
respect them?

Does anyone in the Kirk wonder why the numbers being married by the church are plummeting, why numbers married by Humanist Society Scotland are likely to overtake those getting married in the Kirk this year and why 70 per cent of the people who marry do so without involving religion?

Instead of worrying about 
hypothetical legal questions, perhaps deciding to show everyone equal respect might be a start.

Ross Wright

Albert Drive

Glasgow