Non-discriminatory sex offence law

The Editor, Sir:

I sympathise entirely with the letter writer 'Betrayed Wife', (posted below) who said she was a victim of deception in that her husband cheated on her with another man and then brought home an illness to the matrimonial home that affected her terribly.

In her letter of support for Senator Sandrea Falconer, however, she did not seem to take adequate note of what the letter that criticised the senator's position was saying. Nothing in Falconer's presentation in the Senate, as reported in the media, addressed betrayal by wives or women on the 'down low', a term not generally applied to women but whose concept is understood.

There will always be deceivers

Some time ago it was reported that a UHWI study found that 25 per cent of men who had obtained paternity tests for their 'children' found out that they were not the biological fathers as they had been led to believe. So between lesbians in 'normal' marital relationships and cheating wives/girlfriends, there is a lot of punishment to be meted out if Senator Falconer's law is not to be discriminatory against men.

A casual study of human nature suggests that there will always be deceivers of one kind or another, but 'Betrayed Wife', perhaps, needs also to consider another point. As long as society insists that gay people conform to a majority normative pattern of behaviour, so much more will the percentage of deceivers be high and their deception continue. If we insist - sometimes with hostility - that people conform to certain behaviours publicly, some will do so and then act on what they accept to be their true selves elsewhere. That's the problem the society must grapple with.

I am, etc.,
J .B. PETERS
Kingston