Letters: Homosexuality and religion

Your correspondent Donald J Morrison arrogantly tells us that civil partnerships "never will have God's approval" (letters, 15 July). Like many of Lillian Ladele's supporters, he does Christianity a disservice by presenting it as a homophobic religion based on smug certainty. While I respect Lillian Ladele's right to her views, I find them abhorrent. I support gay marriage not despite being a Christian, but because I am a Christian. The basis of my faith is Jesus Christ. He rejected hypocritical morality and narrow understandings of family relationships. He taught a reliance on God's guidance rather than a set of rules.

Homosexuality is a subject that appears very occasionally in the Bible; when it does it is usually in the context of condemnations of homosexual rape, prostitution and adultery. In contrast, the Bible contains hundreds of references to poverty and is full of condemnations of those who exploit the poor, harm God's creation and achieve their ends through violence.

The Christian Institute, which funded Lillian Ladele's case, claims to be "committed to upholding the truths of the Bible". When is it going to start funding cases brought by Christian civil servants who don't want to administer government policies that perpetuate poverty, harm the environment or promote militarism?

Symon Hill

London SE4

Donald Morrison is to be congratulated on a really funny letter. His amusing abuse of biblical terms, his obviously ironic contention that people in civil partnerships have "plunged the depths of sin" and his witty claim to know the mind of God amounts to a subtly comic parody of the language of barmy fundamentalism. While people can demonstrate such a rich sense of humour, we can be confident that bigoted homophobia cloaked in religion will never gain a toe-hold in our society.

David Shaw

Leeds

Given that the courts seem to have decided that a civil partnership is, after all, a marriage, subject to the approval of an anthropomorphised deity, what will this mean for the two sisters who wished to undergo a civil partnership in order to obtain the same inheritance rights as the rest of us who cohabit and wish to make it legal?

Manda Scott

Clungunford, Shropshire

Ivory sale does not endanger elephants

If your readers simply see what you printed regarding the decision by Cites on selling stockpiled African ivory to China they may feel the elephant is in immediate danger (report, 16 July). This is not the case. In northern parts of Africa there is pressure on elephants, but this is more to do with an inability of governments to deal with the wildlife-human interaction, as human populations expand.

The Southern African Development countries on the other hand have a much stronger record in terms of managing human-elephant interactions, and have controlled poaching to a very high level. And yes that also includes Zimbabwe – showing that (irrespective of dysfunctionality in much of government) its highly regarded wildlife-conservation system still functions. Selling stockpiled ivory can actually provide funds for improving conservation activities, which is what is really needed. This decision is not a sudden knee-jerk reaction, it is part of a process which began at the Cites meeting in Harare in 1997.

China, too, has been making major strides in abiding by its obligations under various international conventions for wildlife. There is thus now a situation where trade will be strictly controlled and monitored. The stand of the UK Government is entirely appropriate, and part of a global consensus on this issue.

If there is a cloud over the future of elephant populations it will come more from the effects of climate change, and the sheer pressure of human spread into the African countryside, not from trade in carefully controlled stockpiles of existing ivory stocks.

Peter Bridgewater

Joint Nature Conservation Committee, Peterborough

As a Labour party member and campaigner for animal welfare, I am deeply ashamed and angered that our government has taken a decision that will result in the butchering of the magnificent, gentle and intelligent elephants of Africa.

Once again, the sentient creatures with which we share this planet have been sacrificed on the altar of global economics. I note that New Zealand and Australia had the progressive vision and decency not to vote for this disgrace.

Joan Ruddock, the Minister responsible, once won an award for her animal-welfare work; perhaps she would now like to hand it back?

Chris Gale

Chippenham, Wiltshire

I read the report about China's application to trade in ivory with great interest. As a Regional Secretary of the Shark Trust, an educational charity that campaigns for the protection of sharks and rays, I was heartened to see that the article included a reference to China's obsession with shark-fin soup. This obsession has drastically reduced the number of sharks in our seas in recent years.

To my horror, in the same edition (14 July), was an article about two white sharks being spotted off Martha's Vineyard. Suddenly sensationalised journalism came into play and the article described the sharks as killers – what human had they killed? As your report pointed out, the last shark attack in that area was in 1936. The article closed with the words: "so far, they have yet to turn their sights on humans".

An average of five people are killed by sharks worldwide each year, which is fewer than people killed by falling coconuts in Hawaii. Humans, on the other hand, kill an estimated 100m sharks a year, mostly for their fins. The fins are quite often removed while the shark is still alive, with the body thrown back to experience a slow and lingering death. Populations of large sharks have been reduced by 70 per cent in the Atlantic and 99 per cent in the Mediterranean. The Ocean is a far better reducer of CO2 than the Amazon Rainforest, but healthy seas require a healthy population of sharks. So please could we have less sensationalist articles about sharks that only serve to further harm these magnificent creatures.

Paul Jackson

London SE1

The morality of choosing to breed

Dominic Lawson refuses to take seriously the huge, hard, genuinely moral questions at the (reproductive) core of sex (Opinion, 15 July). These concern the morality, for those with the power to choose: first, to have more children than they can feed, thus either ensuring they starve or forcing the rest of us to feed them when our own food is getting ever scarcer; and second, to have more than two children anyway, thus ratcheting up the global population, and so ratcheting down everyone else's share of the (already dwindling) natural resources on which everyone's survival depends.

Roger Martin

Wells, Somerset

Dominic Lawson makes allegations of hypocrisy on the issue of population. The truth is that for too long the green movement has been silent on the subject. Content to say an awful lot on issues such as airport expansion, renewable energy and water scarcity, we have been quiet on the need for a population policy. Whether or not the state should intervene in family-planning matters is just one of the many difficult questions to be asked in a public debate that we have not had yet.

Scratch the surface of any environmental problem and population growth is the root cause. The simple formula: "population times consumption equals impact" cannot be ignored and is a legitimate one for governments to untangle. If not, who else will take a lead? But to suggest that the subject should be tackled is to risk accusations of post-Malthusian madness. Why? Climate change is with us and it is the actions of a growing population that is contributing to a world bent out of shape by our reckless behaviour. To de-couple action on climate change from population and lifestyle would indeed be madness.

Nick Reeves

Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management, London WC1

I'm glad that Dominic Lawson shares Professor Guillebaud's commitment to giving individuals the ability to determine the size of their family. I hope this means that he will support the work of Marie Stopes International, which declares that one pregnancy in three is unintentional, that there are more than 200 million families who would use family planning if they had access to it, and that there are only five condoms per man per year in sub-saharan Africa.

Roger Plenty

Stroud

BMA fears about unreliable websites

I would agree with Christina Patterson's assertion that patients should be able to express their opinions forcefully to doctors (16 July). Clinicians have always welcomed feedback from their patients, whether it is positive or more critical, and their views can help shape the way that NHS services are provided.

However, the BMA is concerned that uncensored, comment-based websites will not provide reliable information for patients to make considered judgements when, for instance, they want to choose a GP practice or a hospital to be referred to. Unreliable sites that are open to manipulation or are used in a malicious way are no help at all.

Dr Richard Vautrey

Deputy Chairman of the BMA's General Practitioners Committee, British Medical Association, London WC1

Beavers and biodiversity

Reintroducing beavers to Scotland (report, 10 July) could well improve biodiversity, but only if combined with large-scale riparian (alongside freshwater) woodland restoration. We have less native woodland and greater grazing pressure than elsewhere in Europe where beavers have been brought back.

Scottish Natural Heritage will be closely involved in this reintroduction. Their Beaver Advisory Group, on which I sat, concluded through a Project Plan that any reintroduction should be combined with major habitat restoration. Among the Group's concerns was that tree regrowth, following beaver foraging, might be inhibited by overgrazing, and increase habitat decline. As Alan Watson rightly says, beavers also have a great liking for aspen, which is a threatened tree species. This Plan seems to have fallen by the wayside, and urgently needs reviving.

Alan Drever

Sleat, Isle of Skye

The lost art of the compilation tape

Tim Walker's paean to the compilation tape (14 July) doesn't tell the whole story. Nothing is mentioned of the physical talents required to put a mix tape together. The timing of depressing the play and record buttons of my Sanyo music centre to coincide with the needle hitting the groove of an LP is a lost art, as is gazing at the little window on the cassette itself and guessing how much tape was left.

Getting this latter wrong could prove tricky. I once tried to convince a girlfriend that the Led Zeppelin classic actually does end with the ethereal whisper "... and she's buy-ing a stairway to hev". I failed, and so did the relationship.

Stan Broadwell, Bristol

Briefly...

Note on a small island

Given that the island of Niue is "a speck of coral" in the South Pacific, it is surprising that it should be "100 miles square" (report, 9 July). Perhaps your correspondent meant "100 square miles"?

Michael Haigh

Kinross

Twin talk

Having read "Twins: what Brad and Angelina need to know" (15 July), I feel compelled to reassure any readers expecting a double delivery. My husband and I have five-month-old twins and, while it is hard work in places, it's more double the pleasure than double the trouble.

However, we can't go three feet down a supermarket aisle without being stopped. Most of the comments – "Got your hands full", "Double trouble!" etc – are well-intentioned, but the question "Are they natural?" always leaves me wanting to answer, "No, they're plastic".

Genevra Fletcher

Newquay

Fair tips

In a restaurant chain for which a friend works, tips paid in cash may be kept by staff. However, tips paid by credit or debit card are kept by the restaurant, and employees are instructed not to reveal this fact, even in response to a direct customer question.

On one occasion, a company official, posing as a customer, made just such an enquiry. The waiter answered truthfully and as a result was sacked for not adhering to company policy

Michael Byrne

Canterbury, Kent

Post Offices doomed

Graham Forsyth (letters, 17 July) says: "It is simple: use it or lose it". Would that it were so. But some busy offices are being closed too. The government argues that because every transaction in the Post Office "loses" money, a busy office loses more money than a slack one. Heads they win. Tails we lose.

Conrad Cork

Leicester

Flying the flag

I hope that, should a British project make a successful lunar landing ("Manchester to the moon?" 16 July), it would crown its achievement by flying the Union Jack the right way up!

Graham Beard

Liverpool

Teachers' pay

I am so sorry that not enough teachers are quitting the job to enable Bill Cockburn, Chairman of the School Teachers' Review Body, to consider any further improvements to teachers' pay (16 July). Perhaps it would help if some of us older teachers were to hurry up and die, too?

Bob Griffiths

Congleton, Cheshire