Denying happiness to others

I am sure Michael Asciak is a good man. I sincerely believe his contribution on the ethics of responsibility (Talking Point, January 19) although grossly misinformed and insensitive to the feelings of gay, bisexual and transgender people, was in good faith and carried good intentions.

Dr Asciak has every right to his values and opinions but he has no right to enforce his views and values on others by entrenching them in the country's laws, especially since most of his statements have no scientific, social or cultural evidence whatsoever to support them.

I also think he should stop living in fairy-tale land and start to understand the suffering of all those who do not fit into his "moral" framework. And he should stop dehumanising gay, bisexual and transgender people.

For example, he goes as far as to call love between two men or two women a "personal contractual relational obligation". What does this mean in reality? Well, here's a real story:

Two men fell in love with each other and lived together for more than 30 years. It happened naturally. They could not have been happier with any other arrangement. 

Whether we accept it or not has no effect on the fact that it occurred. Homosexuality has been with us for millions of years and is part of nature (all mammals exhibit homosexuality and in biology this type of sexuality is thought to play an important role in controlling reproduction). Homosexuality has never become extinct and therefore it must be useful in some biological way. Not all gay people are the one-night stand, perverted types that some people would have us to believe. 

Anyway, these two men lived together, made love to each other, quarrelled, laughed and cooked together, and supported each other during times of illness and pain. When one of them fell terminally ill the other spent months at his bedside, first at home and then at the hospital, taking care of him. 

None of their relatives showed up. For them, their relationship simply never existed. The two men got no recognition whatsoever. After death, the surviving partner had no right to his partner's possessions or any benefits that are normally given to widows, because for the state he had simply never existed and the love, the "personal contractual relation", simply was not worth as much as that between a man and a woman.

So, as Dr Asciak says in his article, "it really is about love or the lack of it. Not the dispassionate, worldly, glitzy, disposable kind of love, but real love". 

Now, if someone wants to have children that is their choice. But please, don't deny the happiness of living together to gay people. Don't deny them the right to form their own family, their own version of "happiness". Who are we to judge what makes a person happy? Legalising gay marriage forces no one to marry anyone of the same sex. Gay marriage will affect heterosexuals' relationships as much as the discovery of a new galaxy. Gay marriage gives homosexuals the dignity that should be given to every person, irrespective of their sexual orientation. Gays are not children of a lesser god.

The truth is that a small percentage of young people are born homosexuals or bisexuals, even though very few of them admit it in public. It's simply a question of statistics. They too will want to live happily with their future partner without having society discriminate against them. How the sexual preferences of this small percentage may threaten the family and society is beyond me.

The deterioration of our family values is due to many other factors and not because of homosexuality. I would simply like to say this to all those who, like Dr Asciak, have started a crusade to demonise, block or ban gay marriage:

Please be aware that when you become an anti-gay marriage activist, your activism is not promoting or safeguarding anything. Families do not break up because of the introduction of gay marriage. When you attack gay marriage you are not protecting anyone's rights, you are simply denying happiness, the happiness which you yourselves already have, to others.