Lesbians, like nuns (and other women that knoweth not man), are extremely unlikely to get cervical cancer. So there are advantages. On the other hand, the fruit of not having borne children is the higher likelihood in later years of producing uterine fibromas.

ma fhimtekx!!! naf naqra don’t worry… but your answers do not address my punch line (crass cultural ignorance).

Daphne, one other thing that i think you are not really conscious of, is that gay men produce feminine hormones more than hetero men. this is what generates the feminine behaviour of most not all gay men. this effectively makes them more feminine to the average man, hence less manly, hence more subject to having what you called as commitment on the agenda… do you see you are getting this the other way round? in psychology, this is called animus (male behaviour) and anima (female behaviour), and that is where the idea of a 50:50 came from. because no-one is 100:0 or 0:100. an average man is about 75:25, and an average female is 25:75. then the closer you get to 50:50 is what distinguises between homosexual and heterosexual.

Daphne, sorry to “contradict” you… but ‘high-risk group for HIV’ is not an appropriate argument. The facts are that as a proportion, homosexuals tend to go to the GU clinic for testing more than their heterosexual counterparts. This doesn’t make gay people more high risk than anyone else.

[Daphne – It is not ‘gay people’ who are considered a high-risk category for HIV, but gay men. Gay women are not really at risk of HIV. In fact, they are a lower-risk group than heterosexual women. It is not because they are gay per se, but because anal sex and promiscuity are high-risk activities. Men in general tend to be more promiscuous than women, whether they are gay or straight, but so as to be promiscuous, hetero men must find and seduce women. Men looking for men don’t have these problems. Yes, lots of gay men are in stable relationships, but…]

Sexual carelessness is bountiful, and in everyone’s opinion, everyone can get HIV. The fact that gay people find it harder to commit to one person only (in a dating/marriage sense) is true – but could this be the cause of not having the appropriate legal instruments to allow such behaviour?

[Daphne – Gay women tend to have stable relationships. The problem with gay men is not that they are gay but that they are both men, and so commitment doesn’t figure enormously high on their agenda. Hetero men usually only settle down at the insistence of a woman.]

I think that the bond between a man and a woman is never stronger than that between a man and a man or a woman and a woman. What we as humans accept (or are made to accept) cheapens such relationships. So, you are right in believing that gays/lesbs are high risk HIV individuals. You’re right in a sense, because that is the result of crass cultural ignorance. Now go ahead and show this comment!!

[Daphne – I don’t think lesbians are a high risk group. They are in fact a lower risk group for HIV transmission than heterosexual women – and there’s no need for us to get graphic as to the reasons why.]

On this one you are clueless.

[Daphne – Of course, because one has to be homosexual to know about the rights of homosexuals.]

I’m sorry to drag this one out – I’m not trying to have the last word, I just can’t understand the logic of your argument.

To me it seems as though your aforementioned statement is hypothetically akin to, say, MEPA withdrawing regulations enforcing lifts in public places for people with special needs because such facilities might be abused by people with no such needs.

True, enabling civil partnership for homosexuals might be a right abused by heterosexuals for their own needs. This, however, is no excuse for not granting homosexuals a basic right such as this which would enable committed couples to have rights similar to our married heterosexual counterparts.

[Daphne – I didn’t mention abuse. On the contrary, I pointed out that people marry for all sorts of reasons that have nothing to do with love, and that love is not a prerequisite for marriage, nor has it ever been. I merely highlighted a different angle which I thought you might find interesting: that civil same-sex unions are not the preserve of homosexuals, and that nothing in the law will specify that homosexuality is mandatory for a same-sex union – just as nothing in man/woman marriage law specifies that heterosexuality is mandatory. I don’t classify as abuse two heterosexuals entering into a same-sex union, just as I don’t think it is abuse of the existing marriage laws for a homosexual person to marry somebody of the opposite sex. If he/she has lied to his/her spouse, then certainly it is an abuse of trust, but not of the law. People marry who they please for whatever reason suits them.]

You lost me here. You are at a disadvantage as much as me, because should you want to do so you also cannot marry a woman? There is a basic difference here. You married the person you presumably wanted to.

[Daphne – Marrying the person you wish to marry has nothing to do with rights, and you should know that. Plenty of people can’t marry the person they want to marry, and they’re not all homosexual. The right you have in mind is the right to form a family. Nobody is stopping you from living with whomsoever you wish to live with, as long – of course -as he reciprocates the sentiment or merely wants a meal ticket.]

I would not be able to in Malta, even though both are single and over the age of consent, which were the only requirements in your case. The law should be about people and making our lives better, and not law for the sake of the law.

[Daphne – Don’t you live in The Netherlands? So go ahead and marry him then. What exactly is your problem here?]

And on this topic, x’tak dan l-ahhar? You remind me, not totally, of one Marie Benoit back in the late 90s when she decided, only god knows why, to write a tirade of absurd and clueless letters to the Sunday Times about homosexuality.

[Daphne – The difference being that I am far from clueless about the subject, have a disciplined mind and belong to a completely different generation. It’s a subject which interests people, as can be seen from the fact that this post shot to the top of the Most Active and Most Comments lists immediately. And finally, I absolutely CANNOT STAND the total absence of logical reasoning in the ‘gays have fewer rights’ arguments. There is NOTHING in our laws which distinguishes between homosexuals and heterosexuals.]

[Daphne – It isn’t. The inheritance situation of spouses is different to that of non-spouses.]

I’m afraid I fail to see your point. What on earth is the use of marrying someone of the same gender if you’re straight? True, like gay people, straight people can’t marry someone of the same sex – but why on earth would they want to?

[Daphne – Lots of reasons. Marriage was originally an economic and strategic union and not a love match, and much of that still holds true. People come to all sorts of arrangements. I know a non-Maltese homosexual man who married a Maltese lesbian before we joined the European Union, just so that he would be able to live here in Malta with his Maltese boyfriend.]

Surely allowing civil partnership would simply be beneficial to homosexuals?

[Daphne – No. It would be beneficial to anyone who decides, for whatever reason, that he or she would stand to gain by marrying an individual of the same gender. The mistake you people make is to assume that marriage is a synonym for love. It isn’t. Very many heterosexual marriages are strategic unions and strangely, they are often the ones which last longest. Let’s say two unmarried women of a certain age own a house jointly and live in it together. They are not lesbians, but merely friends. Unless they are married to each other, when one dies the other is going to have problems with inheritance tax and rights to use of the property. So to solve that, they marry each other. It doesn’t follow that they must have sex. Again, the mistake you make is to assume that a law on same-sex marriages will stipulate that the people making use of it must first be examined for proof that they are gay. It won’t. People entering into heterosexual marriages are not asked for proof that they are heterosexual. It’s basically up to them, though of course if one spouse hides their homosexuality from the other, the other can successfully seek to have the marriage declared null by the civil courts.]

Though while I can’t tell you why it’s mostly men that are making most of the fuss I’m glad that someone is.

[Daphne – I’ll tell you why homosexual men whine ‘unfair’ more than homosexual women. It’s because homosexual women have had more problems as women than they will ever have as homosexuals, so they have a proper sense of perspective.]

[Daphne – And in your mind that’s a real problem. I’m all for encouraging homosexuals to raise families. It might help them understand what real problems are when compared to not being permitted to donate blood. If that’s the sum total of your problems, you’re lucky.]

What I’m trying to say is that ”enough already” is just too sub-optimal to be a proper outcome for anyone, regardless of whether you’re gay, or being beaten by your husband. Your comparison understates one type of discrimination in a bid to elevate another.

[Daphne – The Blood Bank refusing your blood perfectly understandably because you’re in a high-risk group for HIV hardly compared to living with a wife-beater who doesn’t give you money to feed your children with.]

[Daphne – That’s exactly what I’m telling homosexual men: enough already because you haven’t got any real problems. And until the 1990s you had more rights than women. Now women at last have the same rights as homosexual men, but it’s been a long time coming.]