Sir, - I refer yet again to correspondence from Mr Rory O'Hanlon and in particular a letter of July 3rd. This is the last time I shall intervene and propose in future to allow Messrs O'Reilly and O'Hanlon an open field to bore your readers into antagonism to their views.
I will not attempt to nit pick my way through all the inaccuracies in the most recent letter but will confine myself to commenting on the fact that Mr O'Hanlon reiterated with approval the opinion of the Chief Justice neglecting even to mention the two important dissenting judgments which were eventually upheld in the European Court of Human Rights, to which avenue of appeal the decisions in the Irish court had opened the way. Unlike my opponents, I am prepared to accept the democratic process and to follow it to its logical conclusion, accepting then the result.
However, to enlist such well-known homosexuals as Socrates, Plato and even Oscar Wilde into the list of those antagonistic to basic human and civil rights for gay people is, if I may employ the phrase, "just a little perverse". This is more especially true when one considers that Plato's Symposium, which laid the foundation for the European conception of spiritual love, is based entirely on the love between men. It is of course true that both Plato and Socrates felt that the physical relationship was merely the gate to a more significant spiritual one but the suggestion that the ancient Greeks were antagonistic to the practice of homosexuality is laughable in the extreme.
As far as Oscar Wilde is concerned, I thought I had seen everything. Bankrupted, murdered judicially, violently shorn from the family he loved by the hypocrisies of Victorian England, then idolised, sanctified, postage stamped, statued, more recently morally fumigated and rendered suitable for family consumption with the reality of his sexual life neatly tidied away, here he is revealed at last in his true nature by Mr O'Hanlon as an anti-gay bigot. I have heard it all now. Oh Mother Ireland, you're certainly rearing them yet! - Yours, etc,
Senator David Norris,
Seanad Eireann,
Baile Atha Cliath 2.