Sir, - How tragic to read almost daily of the horrors being committed in Algeria, and how sad that to date no significant Islamic leader has seen fit to condemn either these acts of barbarity or the suicide bombings in Jerusalem.
However we, as Christians, have little on which to compliment ourselves in these matters. In Colombia, for example, the death squads, armed and trained by Colombia's official Catholic army, murder several hundred people each month. Recently 30 people were done to death by the Colombian death squads in Mapiripan in exactly the same manner - by slitting their throats and dumping carcases in a nearby river. Among the target groups in both Algeria and Colombia are people identified as homosexual. I was particularly saddened to read in Lara Marlowe's "Letter from Algiers" (October 22nd) an account by an eye-witness of some of these atrocities. One paragraph was particularly chilling: "In the beginning, they only slashed the throats of drug addicts and homosexuals. They warned them first. The townspeople thought it was a good thing."
Wasn't it Pastor Niemoller who said: "First they came for the Communists and no one protested. Then they came for the Jews and no one protested. Then they came for the homosexuals and no one protested. Then they came for me and there was no one left to protest."
I was even sadder to read in the same issue of your paper a letter concerning the statistical incidences of homosexuality in which the writer first draws the red herring of Aids into the equation and then seeks to undermine the clearly established figures of the Kinsey Pomeroy and Martin Report of 1949, presumably by reference to later and flawed research vitiated by insecure scientific methodology. The reason for this challenge is given in the final paragraph: "Statistically, only a proportion greater than some five per cent of the population in consideration is generally taken to be a significant proportion of the population." Apart from anything else this conveniently eliminates all the Protestant and non-Roman Catholic, Jewish, Muslim and non-believing members of our society. It is, I believe, a highly dangerous notion that morality is a byproduct of mathematics. Until as human beings we learn to accept and to respect diversity there is little doubt that the peace of God will continue not only to pass our understanding but to pass us by altogether. - Yours, etc.,
Seanad Eireann, Baile Atha Cliath.