MR Peter Johnston tells us (The Bolton News, March 31) that he has had two major associations with women.

I have only had one — 60 years married this year — so what? I don’t care if he is heterosexual or homosexual, I will treat him with the same respect.

The homosexual “community” are determined to be, not only equal to heterosexuals but, with their wish to get the terms “married” and “in partnership with” on an equal footing, superior to us by destroying the one decent standard that all religions believe in — the sanctity of a union between a man and a woman for the purposes of procreation.

It is the desire to be married in a church with the full recognition and force of the law. Despite their protestations to the contrary, that is precisely what their most recent assault on the standards of the heterosexual community will result in.

The churches will be forced by law to ignore the conscientious objections — based on Christian beliefs — of the clergy.

The hope that homosexuals will be sufficiently compassionate to select only churches with homosexual vicars, etc, will — as has been demonstrated by the recent disgraceful persecution of a Christian hotel owner and his wife in Wales — not happen.

I can only hope that, if the law is changed to suit the homosexuals, the first pair of men wishing to get married do so in an Islamic mosque. Perhaps the law will only apply to the Christian churches, so furthering their persecution? On the same subject, David Sharples (The Bolton News, March 19) writes that homosexuals are an easy target. If he believes that, then he has obviously not thought about the numbers involved. I have always believed that the universal bowing and scraping to the commands of homosexuals was a case of the tail wagging the dog.

The homosexual community has gone from being “the persecuted” to being “the persecutors”.

Live and let live should be their motto as well as ours.

Mr F Isherwood Latham Road Blackrod