Letter to the Editor
Feb. 18th, 2004 12:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
patgundThis the text of a letter to the editor I sent to the San Diego Union-Tribune. I have no idea if they'll publish it. Since the SD U-T tends to be somewhat rabidly right-wing, I suspect not.
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Let me see if I understand this. Seeing thousands of devoted couples getting married in San Francisco is somehow a threat to marriage. But things like Brittany Spears 50+ hour marriage, the climbing divorce rate, the various marital “indiscretions” that politicians of both parties have done, etc., are all somehow acceptable simply because they’re between a single man and a single woman??
So I can go to Las Vegas, get drunk, and find myself wedded to someone I just met, simply because I’m heterosexual, right? But friends of mine, who have been with their partners for years and built homes, families, and lives with them, can’t marry their chosen spouses because somehow that “undermines the sanctity of marriage”. Never mind that marriage has differed from place to place and from custom to custom from the dawn of recorded history, and there’s never been one true form of marriage anywhere in human history.
I don’t find the idea of allowing same-sex marriage to somehow weaken my right to marry, but rather I find it an idea that strengthens the very concept of marriage and commitment in this country. It’s long past time that our country places this irrational phobia and hatred of Gays and Lesbians behind us, and guarantee equal rights for all – including the right to marry one’s partner, be they opposite sex or same sex.
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Let me see if I understand this. Seeing thousands of devoted couples getting married in San Francisco is somehow a threat to marriage. But things like Brittany Spears 50+ hour marriage, the climbing divorce rate, the various marital “indiscretions” that politicians of both parties have done, etc., are all somehow acceptable simply because they’re between a single man and a single woman??
So I can go to Las Vegas, get drunk, and find myself wedded to someone I just met, simply because I’m heterosexual, right? But friends of mine, who have been with their partners for years and built homes, families, and lives with them, can’t marry their chosen spouses because somehow that “undermines the sanctity of marriage”. Never mind that marriage has differed from place to place and from custom to custom from the dawn of recorded history, and there’s never been one true form of marriage anywhere in human history.
I don’t find the idea of allowing same-sex marriage to somehow weaken my right to marry, but rather I find it an idea that strengthens the very concept of marriage and commitment in this country. It’s long past time that our country places this irrational phobia and hatred of Gays and Lesbians behind us, and guarantee equal rights for all – including the right to marry one’s partner, be they opposite sex or same sex.
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