Courtney McGrailDear Editor, The ideal of the Christian family is embedded in the Irish Constitution and provides a template or framework for the family. Not all families are ideal, not all families are Christian, but Irish laws within the Constitution are capable of accommodating people of different belief systems. The forthcoming referendum on same-sex marriage will alter the entire legal concept of marriage and family (the two go together at present), and will replace it with a concept of marriage which has nothing necessarily to do with producing families of children, but is primarily concerned with the satisfaction of real or perceived personal needs of the adults concerned.
As Christians, we should not be ashamed or think it wrong to seek to have Christian laws on our statute books, and Christian principles built into our Constitution.
Time and time again such have proved to be the best ingredients for a stable society. It was on such basis that what was good in our civilisation was built, and society lost its way when Christian principles were discarded.
My own belief is that, if the same-sex marriage amendment is passed, the legal status of Christianity itself will, to a greater or lesser extent, be undermined in our Constitution and in our country.
A secularist or atheistic legal system, would not extend the same tolerance to Christians, as atheists have enjoyed under a Christian Constitution.
After all, the Civil Partnership Act, which established the rights of gay people seeking to enter into a permanent partnership, was enacted under our present, Christian, constitution.
Yours etc.,
Liam Kearns,
Carrick-on-Shannon,
Co. Roscommon.