Thank you for publishing my letter on the subject of gay marriage (Opinion, May 24).

No thanks, however, for prefacing the letter with a strap line of your invention: “Adam and Steve”.

The whole point of a letters page is for readers to be able to express their views freely and without any editorial influence.

By going for this cheap one-liner it would be reasonable for your readers to assume that you think the idea of gay marriage is itself a joke.

Any comment?

Mike Peacock

(via email)

EDITOR’S NOTE: An entry for “Adam and Steve” can be found on Wikipedia. This records that the phrase had its origins in a conservative Christian slogan, “God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve”, which, the entry further notes, was “intended to concisely summarize Judeo-Christian Bible-based arguments against homosexual practices or homosexuality”.