Poor case against sexual equality

OPPOSITION to marriage equality as demonstrated by several religious contributors to your letters page over the last few weeks falls into three lines of argument.

The first is that Abrahamic holy books say that it is wrong. There are many other well-known silly behavioural prescriptions in those ancients texts which are conveniently ignored and yet religious adherents throw their hands in the air and declare that they are not homophobic but just following the word of their God. A religiously derived point of view is, of course, legitimate but ceases to be relevant to a general philosophic debate when it cannot justify itself in terms other than that it’s in the book.

The second is that marriage equality will somehow be destructive to the very moral fabric of society. Frighteningly, Rose Docherty seems to suggest (Letters, 26 May) that even the slightest notion of equality will be bad for families children, and democracy. The idea that young people chose to be gay as a result of being tempted by the mere existence of positive attitudes is an absurdity which I thought went out with the repeal of Clause 28. I have yet to hear any cogent explanation from the religious as to the process by which universal equality will bring about this moral apocalypse. They even claim that they are being discriminated against because they are no longer allowed to discriminate against others.

Finally, we hear the complaint that equality legislation is an unaffordable luxury in these times of recession. Marriage equality is as inevitable as racial equality and any cumbersome parliamentary process is being made so largely by the heel-dragging of a reactionary few.

Neil Barber,

Edinburgh Secular Society