Sir, – While welcoming your criticism of Hungary's new and ill-judged anti-LGBT laws ("The Irish Times view on anti-LGBTI+ laws: standing in solidarity", June 26th), the editorial proposal that European Union funds should be suspended to Hungary to encourage it to leave the EU or change its laws seems equally ill-judged and shortsighted.
As your editorial notes, for many years Ireland’s laws were themselves an outlier in Europe on many social issues with homosexuality only decriminalised in 1993.
Should the EU have threatened Ireland to change those laws or other laws on sensitive social matters like abortion?
Would such threats have helped accelerate change in Ireland and helped the more traditionally-minded members of our society reconcile themselves with these changes?
Might such threat instead have poisoned the debate and conflated social issues with national sovereignty?
Hungary, like Ireland, is a sovereign co-equal in the EU with a proud heritage worthy of respectful and thoughtful engagement.
– Yours, etc,
PHILIP WHEATLE,
Bray,
Co Wicklow.