Letters: Concerns over gay parenting

Gay parents

I find myself compelled to reply to the letter around gay parenting (May 30), written by Russ Hay.

He quite rightly points out that, through scientific technology, gay couples can and do rear children, and may produce top-level rugby players of either sex, but that same scientific technology is also able to create three-legged people, who I am sure would make world-class runners, which leaves me wondering if this would also be acceptable to Mr Hay and his ilk?

I am also interested to know where Mr Hay obtained his information around "Modern Genetics are clear on 'gayness' being driven by genes, not by environmental pressure. Nor yet by choice". This is a subject that both interests and intrigues me and despite a fair amount of research on the subject, I have yet to come across anything backing up the above statement.

Mr Hay expresses a distaste for "Ancient Biblical and Koranic notions of sin in relation to homosexuality".

Perhaps he is not aware that the two largest religions worldwide are Christianity, of which the Bible is it's foundation document, and Islam, to which of course the Koran is extremely important.

I also should have no need to point out to Mr Hay that the laws that we live under, and which are the reason we live in a mostly peaceful and ordered society, are based on "ancient biblical notions."

While there may be a small percentage of society that feels that rearing children in a gay relationship is acceptable, there is still a large majority of people in society, whether or not they have religious beliefs, myself included, who do not.

ROD ANDERSON
Whanganui

Thanks due

We can't thank Countdown enough for leading the way in our community for discontinuing the provision of single-use plastic bags. I hear that other local businesses are following. Fabulous.

Thanks for the courageous leadership provided by Countdown. We can only hope to see more courageous leadership elsewhere in our community. Eagerly waiting to see.

NELSON LEBO
Okoia

Crisis time

The National Party needs to have some grace and humility in settling their differences with the Speaker, Trevor Mallard, as respectfully and as quickly as they can.

Otherwise, their behaviour could be seen as a smokescreen, a la Trump, to divert attention away from their inaction from 2015 over the biosecurity nightmare of Mycoplasma bovis.

A devastating human and animal crisis is unfolding throughout New Zealand. Squabbles in Parliament are unseemly and irrelevant in this time of suffering.

WENDY WARD
Aramoho

Assisted death

Elaine Hampton, you wish to have the choice of when and how to die? I fail to see how you find it cruel of Maggie Barry to remind you that one is allowed to commit suicide. You are wanting suicide, but you want help in killing yourself, no?

As for David Seymour rejecting valid questions/concerns about his bill with the excuse that it is all hypothetical, I find that is either extremely ignorant or perhaps more malicious. It is dangerous to propose something so challenging and extreme as introducing legal killing to a country without doing a thorough risk analysis and risk management plan.

As for his idea that people should not impose their moral convictions on others, well, is having eligibility criteria not imposing on some people's rights then? With that thinking, why are some people allowed to be put down but not others? I thought it was about choice. Obviously not.

I think people need to remember that the eligibility criteria can be altered without it going through Parliament again. Much like it changed in Holland and Belgium where the disabled and babies etc are now killed without their consent.

For some people's "choice'', many will have choice and life taken away from them.

MELINDA BOLTON
Castlecliff

Just be you
Rachel Rose's column of June 2 made me smile ("Be brave, don't skirt around real issue").
Apparently, the "real issue" is angry males — usually young, no doubt, but definitely bigoted in the sense that everybody else had to be exactly like them, or become targets of ridicule. Excellent item, Rachel, you got the point across well.

It was Rachel's lead-in to her topic that made me smile. She told of "Bill" (as she called him), who always wore skirts. Bill was a straight male, with typically male interests. As Rachel reported, when he came into town wearing his skirt, he would suffer ridicule from those angry males.

I've got news for the angry males: Get used to it. I wore a skirt on many occasions during last summer's record heat wave. Places like Victoria Ave, public dances and private outings — and no ridicule.

Why should I wear traditional male clobber that bakes me in hot weather? I'll be in my loose skirts and dresses again next summer.

A word for "Bill": Look and be confident with everything you are. Be respectful, and everybody returns the favour and "lets" you be you.

And Bill, come summer, say hi to the other guy in the street wearing a skirt or dress. It will be me, another (thermally) cool guy sensibly asserting his right to wear clothing appropriate for the temperatures in our new era of global warming.

STAN HOOD
Aramoho