Tackle all hatred

I agree with Peter Kearney that Scottish society “remains scarred by past hatreds and tumults” and that more must be done to tackle the problem of religiously aggravated crime, although the statistics suggest this is highly localised (your report, 15 August). However, both religiously aggravated hate crime and hatreds” can take many forms. Bishop Joseph Toal of Motherwell recently recommended the North American “chastity” group Courage, which claims among other things to help young LGBT people avoid same-sex attraction. It is a group which endangers the physical and mental health of young people through encouraging homophobia on the one hand, and confusion about sex and sexuality on the other.

The Bishop’s endorsement of this “pray away the gay” nonsense should be set against the appalling hate crimes committed against LGBT people in Scotland which, according to Galop, the LGBT anti-violence charity, recorded 1,020 homophobic and 30 transphobic crimes in the period 2015-16 – and those are just the ones that victims reported.

If we are to tackle all hatreds in Scotland, we need to identify all the causes as well as all the victims. A relentless obsession with other people’s sex lives and sexualities is most certainly a cause.

ALISTAIR MCBAY National Secular Society Atholl Crescent, Edinburgh As a teacher of humanism with the City of Edinburgh Council, Les Reid (Friends of the Scotsman, 14 August) shouldn’t ridicule or caricature the beliefs of others. Decrying the idea of an afterlife, he claims that “Christians have thought that community singing could be the main attraction”. Honestly Les, we believers aren’t that stupid. St Paul wrote: “What no eye has seen, no eye heard. nor the human heart conceived…, God has prepared for those who love him.”

JOHN COUTTS Ladysneuk Road, Stirling