Madam, - In recent weeks Prof Patricia Casey has made a number of statements on these pages on the issue of gay and lesbian couples raising children.
To summarise: First, she calls for research references that back up the claim that children being raised by parents of the same sex have similar developmental milestones as those raised by heterosexual couples.
Subsequently, when this research is supplied, she dismisses it out of hand as "flawed" and "weak" and suffering from "ideological bias". Thirdly, she says her own opinion is supported by "a very large and formidable body of research", even though she continually, and selectively, quotes only two studies to support her view.
Finally, she accuses those of us who disagree with her of mounting "personal attacks" that are "unworthy of publication". Where is the personal attack in simply saying - as I have done on these pages previously - that gay and lesbian couples are, and have been for many years, parenting and raising children in Ireland in secure, stable and loving households? That these children are reaching similar developmental milestones as children raised by opposite-sex parents? Or by pointing out that these children and their parents are denied basic rights that are automatically afforded married heterosexual couples and their children?
It seems that Patricia Casey would like to believe these children do not exist. Or she believes that gay and lesbian people are unfit mothers and fathers to their children.
I do not accept that. Moreover, the children raised by gay and lesbian couples whom I know don't accept this either.
Is Patricia Casey telling these children that their parents were wrong to have them? Wrong to raise them? Wrong to provide for them? Wrong to love them? Is she telling these children that their parents are not worthy of the same respect and status in law as other parents?
Allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry in a civil registry office is the only way to ensure these children receive the same rights and benefits as children raised by heterosexual married couples. - Yours, etc,
GRAINNE HEALY, Co-chair, Marriage Equality, Hogan Avenue, Dublin 2.