READING the “humanistic perspective” in the letter of April 8 “Religious bigots make me fed up” from Anon, made me wonder how it might sound if it had been directed against gays or humanists instead of religious people.

Here is how the first paragraph comes out: “It was inevitable that the legalisation of same sex marriages would give that small minority of narrow-minded gay bigots an excuse to trot out how we must suppress religious believers’ opposition to gay marriage because gay bigots say that religious belief is an abomination; or whatever other homosexualist excuse they feel compelled to use to justify their intolerances.”

This sounds like “hate-speech”.

Whatever other loving human relationships there might be, marriage is by its very nature the bonding of one man and one woman in a life-long, exclusive relationship, forming a stable unit of society.

Its natural consequence — the genetic children of the two — can grow up in the best possible environment, and to know both of their natural parents, and to be nurtured and brought up by them.

Significantly, in much of the gay-marriage debate, children and their natural human rights hardly featured.

But the real danger of this social manipulation lies in the arrogance of governments believing that they have power to re-define reality and the meaning of words to suit their current ideology, a “liberal” ideology that cannot tolerate dissent, as shown in Anon’’s letter and in society’s victimisation of consciencious objectors.

What has always been black is now white . . . you will be condemned as a bigot and might lose your job if you say otherwise.

Promoting gay marriage on grounds of “rights” and “equality” has appealed to the fair-minded British public, but has disguised the real issue.

Yes, there are bigots in religion, as there are in all walks of life and write intemperate anonymous letters. But let’s not use their pronouncements as weapons to attack sincere conscience and rationally held views.

Robert Aston Horwich