The Editor, Sir:

In his response to your editorial chiding Basil Waite for his intervention in the Senate recently on preferred family structure, Pastor Al Miller seems to have gone to great lengths to highlight his own shallowness.

1. He missed the point completely or chose to ignore the central point of the editorial - namely that Waite was not making a clearly thought-out comment on the sociology of Jamaica's family structure and family life. Rather, Senator Waite chose to use the occasion to engage in a pandering to a populist perspective rooted in bigotry.

Redefining family structure

2. Miller says 99.9 per cent of Jamaicans and 99 per cent of the world's population are opposed to any redefining of family structure to include gay people wanting to live together. Quite apart from the fact that this is a preposterous statistic plucked out of the air, if it were true, why then get worked up about this tiny minority? How are they a threat to "the preferred family structure"?

What evidence is there that societies that have decriminalised homosexual relationships have experienced an exponential increase in their gay population, that they are more dysfunctional than the highly religious USA or that people who would 'normally' be heterosexual are opting for the alternative out of some bizarre desire to be 'abnormal'?

3. As do so many others, Pastor Miller seems more interested in being an echo chamber for American cultural disputes. There is no clamour by Jamaican gays for any 'right' to get married or to form 'families'. Truth be told, many are already happily married and are raising children while engaging in that notorious Jamaican pastime - stealing love on the side.

The big tragedy for Jamaican society and the wider world is that as long as we insist that people who want to be among their own kind are legally prohibited from doing so, they will engage in 'preferred' relationships for public display, thereby increasing the potential for great emotional tragedy and dysfunction for innocent parties.

I am, etc.,

C.B. BARNSWELL

barnswellc@yahoo.co.uk

Kingston