The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

It would be a tragedy if the gay community should be permitted to railroad the equal rights that should exist between a man and a woman and their children in marriage.

The pity of it is that when various societies decided to recognise “same sex” marriage, the word “marriage” was used to describe this union.

To define marriage is to define a union between a man and a woman. On consummation of that union, children are expected to be born.

However, to use the word “marriage” in the case of a union between the same sex is a misnomer — it is not a marriage at all in the traditional sense of the word — rather than woman and man, it is man to man, and woman to woman. And as for the birth of a child, except through adoption, this is a physical impossibility.

Therefore, when states decided to recognise these unions, the word marriage — which traditionally conveys a completely different idea — should have never been used.

However, we have to accept that some persons are physically different — that’s the way they have come from God’s factory and if that’s the way they are meant to be, then nature will have to take its course and the rest of us should recognise and accommodate it. This is the homosexual’s burden. It is also the heterosexual’s burden.

I am prepared to accept the reality, but what I do find offensive is when gays flaunt their difference, as though they are daring you to object. Heterosexuals don’t go around announcing their heterosexuality, but very often in mixed company, homosexuals let you know they are there.

If homosexuals — be they gays, lesbians, transgender or what have you —want to live together, then go ahead and do so, just as other men and women do. Their home is their home and they are entitled to their privacy. There is no need to make a big performance out of it.

They can have all the rights that heterosexuals enjoy by making mutual wills. We often hear that when one partner is taken to hospital, the rights of the homosexual partner is not recognised and he/she is not allowed to be at the side of their partner. To solve this each should carry a document stating that one is the partner of the other, and whichever way ones goes, so does the other.

If homosexuals lived naturally as do others, I am certain that society would accept them — as most people now do.

Of course, human kind being what it is there will be those who will be critical, but they are critical of both straights and gays, and no amount of legislation can change this.

However, don’t destroy this referendum, which is dealing only with relations between men and women, and their offspring.

As time passes, your turn will come.

HOMO SAPIENS

Nassau,

September 3, 2014.