Complementarity is relevant

Dear Editor, If I understand Cathal O’Sullivan (Letters IC 30/04/2015) correctly, he believes that the significance of the complementarity of the sexes in parenting is overstated.

While the significance of the complementarity of the sexes in relation to parenting may be open to debate, what is definitely not debatable is that without this complementarity society wouldn’t exist because we ourselves wouldn’t exist.

The unique significance of sexual complementarity for our very existence as a species is impossible to overstate and this suggests that it merits special recognition by society, which is what it has received in the form of marriage as this institution has been understood until now.

Yours, etc., 

Hugh Gibney,

Athboy, Co. Meath.