Stifled debate

I WELCOME David Robertson’s call for a rational debate on gay marriage (Letters, 10 March), but how is that to be done with people who claim it is not debatable because they know what God thinks?

Whether by accident or design, when the Kirk debated the rights of gay clergy, supporters of the idea were absent/excluded and the “debate” became a diatribe of intransigence.

Marriage is not a creation of the Church but a natural institution of great antiquity and diversity that has merely been overlaid in this country with a Christian veneer. It lies, therefore, fully within the competence of the government to amend it to suit new insights into the way people of whatever gender and gender-mix relate to each other.

Polls make it clear that the vast majority are no longer prepared to have people told that they have no right to partake in such a basic human ritual on the basis of sexual orientation alone.

Rev Dr John Cameron

Howard Place

St Andrews, Fife