You dedicate another front page headline to the views of a Catholic bishop against same-sex marriage.

The oft-repeated opinions of bishops are automatically newsworthy (“Bishop steps up attack on gay marriage”, The Herald, October 8).

According to the Social Attitudes Survey, 61% of Scots support same-sex marriage, with only 19% opposed, and that 61% includes a majority of Catholics. However, as ordinary citizens, their voices go comparatively unreported.

Those voices include the Scottish Youth Parliament, whose support for same-sex marriage is based on the views of young people of all religions and none, right across Scotland. The Humanist Society of Scotland conducts more marriages each year than the Catholic Church and strongly supports same-sex marriage. A range of smaller religious groups want to offer same-sex marriages. And of course the people directly affected are lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender and their families, who simply want the freedom to make the same commitment to each other as everyone else.

In 2004, Catholic bishops opposed the introduction of civil partnership on the basis that it would “undermine marriage”. It has not, and neither will same-sex marriage. No-one’s marriage is undermined by the wedding of the gay couple who live along the street.

If the bishops are concerned about supporting marriage, why aren’t they putting their energy into doing something about the 50,000 cases per year of domestic abuse (and the rest that are not reported), rather than trying to stop 500 marriages per year between loving same-sex couples?

The bishops have decided their biggest political and social campaign for years will not be about domestic abuse, poverty or war, all of which truly undermine marriages and families, here and abroad. Instead they will campaign to prevent other religious groups who want to conduct same-sex marriages from doing so and to prevent same-sex couples who truly value marriage from committing to each other in marriage ceremonies by those groups, humanists and civil registrars.

Future generations, and many of the present generation, will find these priorities incomprehensible.

Tim Hopkins,

Equality Network,

30 Bernard Street, Edinburgh.

I AM intrigued by a number of comments criticising Philip Tartaglia, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Paisley, for his intervention in the debate on gay marriage. It would appear that a number of people even take objection to the bishop’s participation in this debate. It seems strange that in these days of inclusiveness anyone thinks it is in some way wrong for an important Scottish institution to take part in debates about public policy.

Some people have objected to what they see as a threat made by Bishop Tartaglia. They are referring to the comment that if the SNP go ahead with proposals to alter the definition of marriage they may well lose the support of a section of the electorate.

This is not so much a threat as an observation that people who disagree with a party’s policies are unlikely to vote for it. This seems to be an unexceptional statement and no different to any other group of people saying that their support in an election depends on a party’s policies.

Indeed, are there not a rather large number of people who voted Lib-Dem at the last General Election and have indicated that they have no wish to do so again? So what is the difference between a student leader saying the votes of students depend on a party’s policies on tuition fees and a bishop saying the votes of Catholics may depend on a party’s policy on gay marriage?

Michael Ryan,

17 Campsie Drive, Bearsden, Glasgow.

The Episcopalian Provost of St Mary’s Cathedral in Glasgow, the Very Rev Kelvin Holdsworth, need not feel embarrassed by the opposition of Bishop Tartaglia and Archbishop Conti to the proposed gay marriage legislation (“Catholic leader in new gay marriage warning”, The Herald, October 10). The Catholic faithful have been so conditioned by society not to be homophobic (and to cohabit to their hearts’ content), with no antidote from any priest or bishop in sermons during the last 50 years, that these latest remarks will be ignored by the majority of mainstream Catholics.

Traditional Catholics, of course, are a different kettle of morality altogether. We don’t need Archbishop Conti’s gimmicky postcards to recognise the perversity of same-sex marriage. We’ve been speaking out on the normalisation of homosexuality in society and in Catholic schools while he has remained silent. It’s not long since he wrote to instruct his priests to welcome “as a member of the household of the Faith” a laicised priest from the US who is a known advocate of gay rights.

It is noteworthy, too, that it is an Episcopalian cleric who is first on the scene of the crime attacking Archbishop Conti, who recently handed over St Anne’s church in Dennistoun to an Episcopalian congregation for their Sunday services. This is a scandal by Catholic standards, not least because – hilariously, given the gay marriage debate – Archbishop Conti may soon be seen to have given his tacit blessing to the first ever gay wedding in a Catholic Church.

Patricia McKeever,

Editor, Catholic Truth, 10 Sandyford Place, Glasgow.