No, Rebecca, I have to disagree. The secular law has no right to impose one particular view of relationship upon all people in a polity. The law exists to allow all people in a polity to function equally. To decide, as some do, that silly and minor difference such as sexual orientation are, in some way, important enough to deny legal rights - equality before the law - to one group or another is simple prejudice.

Tell me, please, what puts who you want to f*** above, and more important than, skin colour, hair colour, eye colour, religion, political belief, race, or any other marker of difference that you care to name. Sexual orientation is not a matter of whether or not one happens to be right wing, centrist , or leftwing in one's politics - it is a matter of fact. People other than heterosexuals, exist and they ask for, as I do, equal treatment before the secular law of the countries we live in and, what is equally as important, we pay our taxes in. If you don't want to give us that equal treatment before the law then don't take our taxes, for, if you do, then it is, for us, just dhimmitude.

Let me make one thing plain here - I'm gay. I don't seek that you you should view my relationships as being equally as valid in your religious terms as the heterosexual religious marriage vows which you undertake but I do seek, I do demand, that the state, the secular and neutral state, which we all live in should acknowledge in a legal way the sexual contract(s) which I enter into. I pay my taxes, as you do, and I demand the same right of regulation as you and all your heterosexual companions already expect and have - if you will not grant that then stop taxing us. It really is that simple!

Or, are you and all your ilk simply afraid that if gay people are regulated as you are then you won't have some convenient whipping boy any more - some irrational scapegoat which you can blame for all the moral ills in our society, and I do acknowledge that there are moral ills. Perhaps, of course, you do simply believe that there is right way to love and a wrong way to love.

Me, I believe that there is only love - and there's little enough of that in this world without demonising same-sex love and telling honest gay tax-payers that the state refuses too get involved simply because they are in the minority - since when was that freedom and liberty, eh? Gay people like me pay taxes - give us what we pay for and don't, currently, get or stop charging us the jizya.

Dear John,

I'm afraid we'll have to agree to disagree. Marriage is vital to the family which is the foundational institution of civilization. It is not a matter of oppressing gay people - it is a matter of maintaining the glue that holds society together. I believe marriage must be maintained as a special category - that's all.

Dear Rebecca,

I quite agree. Marriage, between male and female, is the foundational institution of societies - although not all of the societies which maintain that are necessarily functional, or fit for purpose.

I am not arguing for gay partnerships to be recognised as marriages, what I am arguing for is that gay partnerships are recognised and regulated by civil law in our secular societies. Gay people pay taxes and therefore they (we) have an inalienable right to the services provided by the state. One of those services is the regulation of long-term sexual partnerships. Many, probably the majority, of long-term gay partnerships contain property, sometimes children, sometimes other obligations to different previous partners - in no sense, as far as legal philosophy is concerned, are they different from heterosexual sexual relationships. So, why can't gay people, gay tax-payers, not have, and expect to have, some sort of regulation, some sort of legal framework, to cover our situation? Why can we not have this regulatory framework enacted into law by the very institutions which our taxation supports and defends?

What we want is equality before the law - not to be identical before the law with heterosexuals ( that's just silly - we're gay, your straight) but equal before the law. What we want is that the law stops ignoring us and regulates for us. Marriage is marriage, nothing can change that nor should anyone try to, but the law and the legal institutions which we help to pay for must give clear guidance and formalise our ad-hoc contracts or it is failing in its duty. If the law cannot, or will not, regulate for us then stop charging us, taxing us, for a service which we don't receive.

Oh, sex is not exclusively about procreation - and I've done my share of that, thank-you very much - it is also about cementing a loving relationship between two people. All we gay people ask is that our relationships are regulated at least to the same degree as childless heterosexual couples' relationships are.  Equality before the law is what we ask for not equality before your beliefs in God or your prejudices, real or imagined, about heterosexual marriage and your beliefs in some special status for marriage.

Of course heterosexual marriage has some special status - it is the foundation of the family in our societies ('though other models do exist and must be considered here), but, nonetheless, there is one inescapable fact: you take our money and you don't provide a service in exchange. If we gay people have to help to fund the free societies in which we live then give us the services which we want or reduce our taxes. Regulation of our sexual affairs in a manner roughly similar to the regulation of heterosexual sexual affairs would make our lives so much easier and it would not challenge or change the position of heterosexual marriage at all - nor should it.

This is not about some spurious notion of equality as advanced by the extreme left, but it is about equality before the law for ALL taxpayers. Give us the regulation which we so manifestly and obviously need or stop taxing us in some small degree and in such a way as to reflect the fact that we do not get equal treatment before the law and, what is more, that we do not get equal service from the government which we help pay for.

This is not about the position of marriage in our free societies - that is, rightly, unassailable - but it is about whether or not me and mine should be expected to pay for a service which we don't get. It's basic fairness, for Heaven's sake; If you want to tax us then provide the services. If you, the heterosexual majority, can't, or won't, do that then give us, we gay people, a tax rebate of sufficient size to reflect the denial of service which we experience.

Yours,

John.