Letters | 1 November 2012

Objections to gay marriage

Sir: Hugo Rifkind (27 October) thinks that religious objections to gay marriage can be ignored because Christians have no right to impose their beliefs on others. He sees nothing illiberal, though, in a small number of progressives seeking to force their new definition of marriage on the rest of us. Our government is threatening to misappropriate a word which owes its value to centuries of mainly Christian tradition in this country. Those many of us who stand in that tradition, both in and out of the Church, protest that the government has no right to do so.
James McEvoy

Chertsey, Surrey

Sir: On gay marriage Hugo Rifkind (27 October) overlooks the Dot Wordsworth argument. The union of two persons of the same sex cannot be called a marriage because every dictionary of the English language since that language began has defined a marriage as the union of two persons of the opposite sex.