BISHOP Day's letter "Gay vote panders to a minority" (July 31) raises several issues.

Few parents would disagree that all our young people deserve to be protected from the many sexual pressures which surround them in their formative years. We share the responsibility of creating a society in which they can flourish safety, secure in that knowledge which is necessary to help them make wise and informed decisions for themselves. That responsibility extends as well to the media, entertainment and advertising.

These concerns are always present, but there is no apparent reason why they should be linked with gay issues. The Stonewall Campaign - Equality 2000 - seeks equality for gay people and an equal age of consent; the repeal of Clause 28, which has effectively prohibited mention of homosexuality alongside heterosexuality within our schools; equal rights in employment, including the Armed Services; and legal recognition for same-sex monogamous relationships, leading to equal partnership rights in housing and pensions.

Peter Tatchell and OutRage, in their demand for lowering the age of consent even further, do not necessarily represent the views of most gay people, or their parents. But they do campaign for an equal age. Would that it were 18 for everyone! For centuries myths about homosexual people have circulated freely, the more lurid the better. Homosexuals have been, and still are, marginalised by many religious groups and within society. Their own fear of the consequences of "coming out" has kept most of them silent and invisible, along with their families.

Now that more of them feel a greater confidence to speak out, including some well-known public figures, the same tired old misinformation about them reaches the headlines.

There is no truth in the assertion that people actually choose to be homosexual; that they are a greater threat to young people than their heterosexual counterparts; that their lives and morals are inferior to those of heterosexual people. To assume that a particular label denotes an absolute type of behaviour within any group is both unjust and naive.

The seven or so scriptural texts quoted to condemn homosexuality need to be examined carefully and within context. Take the story of Sodom, for instance. It was a severe punishment in early tribal times to humiliate an enemy prisoner by subjecting him to male rape. Prisoners were often paraded naked to facilitate this ordeal of subjugation by the victors in a public display. Females were regarded as inferior beings, and so to force a male to take the passive role sexually was the ultimate insult.

The men of Sodom were evil. Instead of welcoming Lot - whom they hated as a foreign sojourner - and his guests - who were really angels in disguise - and offering food and protection in a hostile desert area, they flouted the laws of hospitality so central to the Israelites' culture. They surrounded Lot's house in a threatening manner. They were determined to abuse and physically humiliate his guests and Lot himself if he sought to protect them.

Fortunately divine intervention prevented this from happening, but not until Lot had offered his daughters to appease that unruly mob. This would have been pointless indeed, if all the men of Sodom were homosexual!

Christ mentioned the sin of Sodom (Matthew 10,11-18) as being one of inhospitality towards God's messengers. There is no evidence, as Bishop Day suggests, that He taught anything about homosexuality as "an unnatural lifestyle" (to quote Bishop Day). He is not recorded as having anything to say on that matter. What He did say (Matthew 19,12) was "for there are different reasons why men cannot marry, some because they are born that way" (Good News Bible).

We do need to halt the moral decline within our society, but that is not going to happen as a result of enforcing a system of discrimination between heterosexual and homosexual people. To accept that such legalised discrimination can be justified on grounds of sexual orientation is itself immoral.

CHRISTINE HOLT,

Newcombe Road,

Holcombe Brook, Ramsbottom.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.