Madam, - Senator David Norris's examination of the recent statement from the Vatican on homosexual unions (Opinion, November 11th) was comprehensive, though less than convincing.
Senator Norris may be familiar with the poem by John Donne beginning: "No man is an island, entire of itself. . ." We cannot seek change and hope that no one else will be affected. The legal recognition of homosexual unions will undermine marriage.
More importantly, each child is entitled to be treated as a human being, and not as a commodity. S/he is entitled to the love and care of a mother and a father, for as long as that is necessary, and to the security of a home. Regrettably, homosexual unions tend to deny these basic rights.
Senator Norris's case, which came before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, 1988, was concerned with the rights of adults. The rights of children didn't come into it. Homosexual "rights" are likely to lead, and indeed have led, to homosexual "marriage", and thence to adoption (or "creation") of children. How far removed are we then from paedophilia?
Paedophilia was at one stage considered to be another aspect of homosexual "rights" in the UK and enjoyed respectability. The Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE) there had been a member of the UK National Council of Civil Liberties until PIE was suppressed in 1982.
It should not be overlooked that homosexuality in Ireland was never illegal. Sodomy was; and this is what the Fianna Fáil/Labour Government legalised in 1993.
It may well be that Senator Norris, like Norma McCorvery (of the Roe v Wade case in the US), may recant perhaps too late, when he comes to realise that he has been used in a great social experiment. And experiment it is. - Yours, etc.,
DONAL O'DRISCOLL, Dargle Road, Blackrock, Co Dublin.