With regard to Richard A. Micallef's letter (Apology To Church Due For Articles On Homosexuality, January 2), I would like to ask on what basis should an apology be made to an institution that keeps driving wedges into families with homosexual members, driving thousands of gay youngsters to depression and even suicide, imbuing most of them with a sense of guilt that will permeate their whole lives, causing untold suffering to parents who think they are guilty of something, and worst of all, denying fellow human beings of the right to love and be loved back by a consenting partner of their choice.

It would be an interesting exercise to see, in terms of balance, which group has inflicted the most damage?

The Church or gay people? How many thousands shunned away, beaten, abandoned, killed, mutilated, condemned or forced into sad marriages?

Anyone with a basic knowledge of history knows the answer.

I am ready to accept that, yes, there may be men and women who are called to celibacy, but surely this is something which they have to embrace and accept themselves, out of their own free choice, and not because it is forced down their throats.

When you think about it, it is really cruel to deny a person the experience of physical love.

Even in terms of the Catholic religion itself, how the act of love between two men or two women can be an act against God, is beyond me.

Psychologists have found that gay youngsters are eight times more likely to commit suicide than their straight fellows. What is the Church doing in this respect?

Does the Vatican and the Pope's recent statements help them in any way?

There is, always, in the statements of the Church and those who defend its ambiguous position regarding homosexuality, a lot of insensitivity and cruelty wrapped up in a sugary nicety (example: it is not the homosexual that is evil but the act). With this kind of vague statement, thousands are condemned to intolerance, ignorance, sadness and guilt.

But then this is the same Church that has had to apologise to scientists and Jews after condemning and burning them at the stake, because they questioned its teachings, and which actively and politically opposed women's rights, before society forced it to embrace them.

What moral authority can such a dubious institution have?