Mr J. Bonett Balzan wrote a letter defending marriage and the family (The Sunday Times, October 3).

Strangely, he began with a snide, bigoted comment about how, luckily, the Maltese were not forced to host the German Foreign Minister’s male partner during an official visit.

He doesn’t seem to understand that, despite traditional attitudes, we are talking about people, not theological hypotheses.

Whether Mr Bonett Balzan likes it or not, the German Minister’s partner is his family.

More to the point, many men or women have married and had children before realising their homosexuality and divorcing.

So, again, despite Church grumblings, the fact is that many homosexuals are parents via ‘natural’ methods.

And of course, many people end up with homosexual children, not to mention gay aunts and uncles.

Homosexuals are not from some distant planet – just because someone is gay it doesn’t suddenly mean he is no longer part of a family.

Mr Bonett Balzan goes on to quote the Pope, who said: “It is a principle... that the human being should be protected precisely in situations of weakness; the human person always takes priority over other aims”.

How strange, then, to condemn gay couples as if they aren’t human, as if they don’t also form long-lasting loving relationships, as if they do not also have the right to a priority called respect.

And why shouldn’t they be protected from a legally weaker position? Perhaps it is time to remember Jesus’ words about not casting the first stone.

I find nothing particularly ‘Christian’ in these comments by people who forget that he told us not to judge others but to love.