Sir, – Dr John Murray’s defence of his Iona Institute colleagues (“There is no evidence to suggest we should abandon traditional marriage as basis of our society”, Opinion & Analysis, July 3rd) was interesting, if baffling.
Dr Murray points out that there is a lack of research to date on how children raised by same-sex couples are faring. He goes on to say that “until sufficient good-quality research is conducted, we must withhold judgement and not even consider redefining marriage, which is so valuable as our most child-centred social institution”.
Presumably by this Dr Murray means children raised by same-sex partners are to be denied access to this “most child-centred social institution”, so we will never have good-quality comparable research and because we won’t have that we should never redefine marriage.
It makes me inclined to suggest that while we await the results of the Iona Institute’s research on which came first, the chicken or the egg, that the rest of us should move on with the discussion. – Yours, etc,
THOMAS O’CONNOR,
Caherush,
Quilty, Co Clare.