Dear Sir,

Walton Brown’s recent positions, which he has published since the marriage vote in Parliament, had me wondering what his position is on democratic rule and even the subject of self-determination or sovereignty.

Let me be the first to acknowledge democracy is not perfect and at times not even right, but we advocate it. What else do we have as an alternative source of rule? He proverbially leaves a tropical storm and heads straight for a hurricane when he lambasted the same-sex marriage referendum results and said we now need to go for independence, which has far, far less public support. Doesn’t sovereignty, if respected, mean that the will of the people is protected by the state and its legislature? I may not agree with the legislature, but I have to respect it.

Often you hear people touting the European Convention on Human Rights, or the European Court of Human Rights, but even with such, there is the issue of national sovereignty. Because when you look at it, within Europe itself, same-sex marriage is not universal and only a handful of European Union states actually recognise it.

Germany, for example, does not recognise same-sex marriage, but it does recognise registered partnerships. In the German context, registered partners are not gender-specific. They did not, as in the Bermuda referendum case, create a special category with rights for same-sex individuals only.

Yes, we now live in a diverse world where achieving a pluralistic society is the new challenge. We don’t get there by allowing the minority view to control the perspective for the whole of society, nor by forcing the majority’s beliefs on to those in the minority.

We may get there if we learn the appropriate vehicles for freedom that accommodate the positions of everyone, and this kind of process requires a wholly different format than what Mr Brown seems to want to advocate by calling everyone who does not adhere to his thinking a neanderthal.

I will repeat once again: we may be wise to consider the Government getting out of the business of marriage. Mark Pettingill makes the point the Church marries you, but the court divorces you.

He was obviously pointing to the hypocrisy of the system, but to fix that anomaly, we must let the Church and any societal group define its own terms for marriage and rationale for divorce, and let the courts, when needed, look at the legalities through these individually registered contracts.

That would indeed be true freedom.

KHALID WASI