That’s right… only 300! And the promoters of gay marriage tell us there wont be any difference to our lives.

How many gay people will take up the option and be married?     

They represent less than 1.5 per cent of our population and where it has been ‘legalised’ elsewhere only a small number of them actually get married.

It is time for the deplorables to rise up and show our elected people that they do not have a right to refuse us our vote on the issue.

Mr Morehouse’s letter (Daily Advertiser, August 8) asserts a familiar, and – in my view – mistaken, view that Christians should support same-sex marriage, based on a narrow biblical understanding of “love”.

Genesis chapter 3, reveals that God gave humans the power of individual choice, and makes us consider the notion of sin and “the fall”, as the possible consequences. It is interesting that Mr Morehouse questions God’s purposes throughout the huge breadth of scripture, and the coherent developments from the Old to the New Testaments.

Despite what some people see as anomalies in various sections, the Holy Bible is one continuous narrative which we all need to recognise.

Mr Morehouse’s understanding of Christian love appears to miss the difference between what the New Testament calls “agape” – love, charity, willing the good of others – and “eros”( sexual love), towards fellow humans. He believes that the apostle Paul distorted Jesus’s teaching.

Jesus actually made firm statements about this difference. In Matthew 5:17 Jesus says: “Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill”. He then goes on to talk about various human problems.

More specific were Jesus’ comments about divorce, Matthew 19:1-12, when he was questioned by the Pharisees. Jesus reiterates the creation story about men and women, and insists that a man leaves his family, is joined to his wife “and the two shall become one flesh”. This all expressed in a man-woman union.

Jesus then continues his reasons why a man should marry, and mentions people who are, for various reasons, unable to marry (verses 10-12).

Jesus’s references to the creation of the human sexes and their essential complementarity are unambiguous. A similar account is given in Mark 10:1-12.

All this adds up to a definite statement, by Jesus, about the unsuitability of ideas promoting homosexual “marriage”. Without any sort of denunciation Jesus underlines what His gift of Grace means for human beings.

The Bible teaches us the crucial ideas about our humanity and relationships with God and His creation. Most of these ideas have been present for a very long time and they are very familiar in the daily conditions that apply to all of us as we try to live together amicably and productively. 

We all have to think about such ideas as love, respect and human dignity. The Bible instructs believers to love one another. This love is “agape” – willing the good for others – such concerns for others as their health, body and mind, promoting knowledge, care, all in practical ways.

When people act in ignorance, or badly, against the communal welfare, we need to try to change such behaviours, if they want to live a more productive human life. 

The secular state is increasingly using unproductive secular re-interpretations of our familiar communal values to intrude on these relationships.