The right to a mother and a father

Ours is indeed an age where contradictions abound. During these last few decades much importance has been given to the fact that in a marriage both mothers and fathers have a definite role to play in their children's upbringing.

This is considered to be psychologically and emotionally essential towards the well-being of children and their ability to deal with whatever their future holds in store for them. Fathers give to their children what their mothers can never do and the latter do likewise.

Today there are those who insist, like Ms Gaby Calleja (The Sunday Times, July 17), that there is not really much difference between a heterosexual marriage and one between people of the same sex and that the latter will make good parents as much as a father and a mother in a heterosexual marriage. However, the stark reality is that in a homosexual marriage there is no father and mother but only two fathers or two mothers.

In our society there is endless talk about 'rights', which everybody, rightly or wrongly, seems to be demanding. The children in a homosexual marriage are excluded from having what a child has an inherent right to - a mother and a father. Certainly there are children who, because of death or separation of parents or other unforeseen circumstances, are denied such a possibility, but this is considered unfortunate and surely something not to aspire to.

In a homosexual marriage children are precluded from having a father and a mother from day one of their parents' union and this can only be considered contro natura. Babies are never conceived through the meeting of two ova or two spermatozoa, but as a result of the fusion of ovum and spermatozoon.

What is even more serious is that it is the law which blesses and sanctions such unions, in effect rendering the child an orphan of a mother or a father from the beginning of their parents' union.

When speaking of marriage and parenting, the children's rights to a mother and a father are paramount and all other considerations should be considered secondary.