Correspondent is selective about Bible prohibitions
I wish to question a number of points made by Paul Kokoski in his letter ('Same-sex marriage defies Bible and science, January 31), written in response to a letter by William Yip ('Gay and lesbian couples want equal protection under the law', January 24).
Mr Kokoski claims that 'homosexuality is abnormal behaviour from a religious and scientific perspective'. He goes on to state that 'it is morally detrimental' for children to be brought up by homosexual parents, according to the Bible and science.
Hong Kong is a secular democracy and I fail to see why religion should play a part in politics here. For example, Leviticus - the book in the Bible that bans male homosexuality - also warns against coming into contact with menstruating women and eating shellfish. I imagine the latter takes place often in Hong Kong, despite what the Old Testament may say.
In any case, although marriage may have its origins in religion, the legal status that married couples enjoy is granted to them by our government. Failure to accord the same status to same-sex unions - which are at the moment not legally recognised in Hong Kong - would therefore be discriminatory in principle.
Furthermore, despite mentioning that there are scientific reasons as to why same-sex couples should not raise children, Mr Kokoski merely claims that for homosexual couples to raise a child would be 'intrinsically disordered', citing as evidence the fact that 'no replicated scientific study, for example, has ever found a gay gene or gay DNA'.
If Mr Kokoski is implying that a child raised by homosexual parents would somehow 'turn out' to be homosexual or for any reason be a victim of bad parenting, I would like to refer him to case No S147999 of the Supreme Court of the State of California in September 2007, in which a number of psychiatric institutes assert that same-sex parents are no better or worse at parenting than heterosexual couples.