The author has indeed a reason for alarm:

"parents in Massachusetts have been denied the right to withdraw their child from lessons by gay activists and church adoption agencies in England have had to close rather than adopt babies to homosexual households. A teacher in London was demoted for refusing to read a storybook to her class promoting same-sex marriage, and the former Archbishop of Glasgow, Mario Conti, was reported to police by a Greens Party MP for teaching Christian doctrine on marriage during a sermon."

However, he bangs on the wrong door:

Why can't a parent withdraw their child from ANY lesson and for whatever reason, or without even having to state their reason?

Why can't a business or a charitable institution be able to choose its customers?

Why can't a school-teacher follow their conscience in what they teach?

What right has the state to place its dirty foot in a religious institution?

These and many other issues of the kind affect us all in one way or more, so instead of working for this sector or another, the author should condemn the powers of government, which if curbed, would eliminate all the problems he mentioned!

Taking these monstrous powers from government and giving it to churches instead, is not a solution either - it has been tried and it has back-fired already.

Some correspondents to this site feel that homosexuality is immoral and that children will lack a father or a mother.
I would suggest that there are thousands of children who lack either a mother or father and grow up to be quite well balanced as long as they have love and affection even from a single spouse. I agree that the ideal would be to have two live-in parents of both sex, but again there are many such families that are totally dysfunctional and the children suffer as a result.

I looked up immoral in the thesaurus which produced many definitions and came to the conclusion that really none of them described gay people any more than any hetrosexual person……..Unless you associate the majority with the dogma promoted by the church and their bible, supposedly written by their God which I for one regard as pure mythology and superstition. After all, the Old Testament even sanctions murder and slavery which surely has to be immoral. Love between two people can hardly be called such.

bad, wrongful, wicked, evil, unprincipled, unscrupulous, dishonourable, dishonest, unconscionable, iniquitous, disreputable, fraudulent, corrupt, depraved, vile, villainous, nefarious, base, unfair, underhand, devious; sinful, impure, unchaste, unvirtuous, shameless, degenerate, debauched, abandoned, dissolute, reprobate, perverted, indecent, lewd, licentious, wanton, bawdy, lustful, promiscuous, whorish; informal shady, low-down

SHORT&SHARP
This is not a “progressive” forum, or an anti-progressive one. It is however deeply committed to free speech, and I applaud it for that; even (especially) when it published articles like this, that I completely disagree with.

Wearestardust
Yep, the logical leap from children to marriage is non-existent. The vote will not change anyone’s right to have children, adopt or anything else.

Maybe it’s time for our own referendum on this issue.

@Is Mise. When a government gets elected in western democracies it frequently has less than half of the eligible vote. In the recent UK election for example, the Tories got about 25% of the eligible vote, and a little more than a third of those who did vote. Would you call that government illegitimate? In fact the Irish referendum Yes vote did substantially better than Cameron. Where voting is non-compulsory we usually have to assume that the non-voters either don't care enough either way, or that those who do vote represent the same proportions among parties as those who do not. Unless you are going to insert a clause to the effect that the vote must equal at least 50% of those eligible to vote, the whole argument is pointless. Why not just accept the Irish result for what it was, as so eloquently expressed by their Prime Minister.

@ Rhian: it's not about progressivism or anti-progressivism.

The concern I expressed is about repeated ventilation of bad (or, in this case, absent) arguments for injustice. Arguments for things I deeply disagree with, I can deal with. Indeed, an opinion that is unable to withstand argument is pretty weak. But not calling out bad arguments for bigotry is also weak, and promoting them without question - by, for example, publishing them on a website - is itself supporting bigotry.

[I know it upsets people when one uses the B-word. Channelling Tim Minchin and The Pope Song for a moment; which is worse: calling out bigotry for what it is, or silently consenting to it by not opposing it?]

Concerns about free and fair discussion don't really fly either. If these sorts of weak or absent arguments were being floated about Indigenous people's rights, I don't think we'd be standing for them. That we do stand for them in relation to the rights of LGBTIQ people just indicates how deeply entrenched is lack of regard for LGBTIQ people - we don't notice the double standards we hold.

In relation to referenda, it's not pertinent to Australia. But leaving aside the constitutional and other technical issues: the Parliament of Australia has managed to deal with enfranchising Indigenous people and women, and a range of other rights and equality matters. Saying the Parliament can't deal with this and that it needs to go to the people is to support the idea that certain kinds of sexualities, as public issues, uniquely, are legitimately something that is so sensitive, that legitimately offends some people so much, that unlike having the vote it needs special treatment in terms of making laws. My view, contrary to that, is if some people don't like the gayness, don't be gay. Go and whine on the ACL FB page, but leave the rest of us alone.

Dia dhuit Seamus Ua Néill,

I'm well aware of all that, my point was that the author said that a majority of the Irish had voted "Yes" when it is demonstrably not the case.

My second son voted 'No' on the principal that he is opposed to marriage in general and considers that neither Church nor State should have a part in it; he has a fond regard for the Brehon Laws.

Slan,

Is Mise.