DEAR EDITOR:
I have been following the same sex marriage debate on the
opinion page of The Dispatch. I realized that everyone is trying to
define marriage for someone else using logic based on their own
beliefs.
DEAR EDITOR:
I have been following the same sex marriage debate on the opinion page of The Dispatch. I realized that everyone is trying to define marriage for someone else using logic based on their own beliefs.
The “I believe that athletes play sports, golf is a sport, I play golf, therefore I am an athlete” type of logic. As I understand it, marriage predates all current organized religions. I grew up knowing what marriage was going to be for me. I think of my wife and our relationship and our children and I know what marriage is for me now.
I watched the news reports and saw two men or two women kissing each other and proclaiming that they were married. Knowing what marriage is and always has been, if what I saw on TV is marriage, then I have been wrong. And that’s the problem.
Anyone attempting to advocate same sex marriage is trying to change marriage itself for 90 percent of the world’s population by making all of them them wrong in their belief that marriage, civil or religious, is between a man and a woman.
I think that’s where all the emotion and inflamed rhetoric comes from. I have come to believe that if gay people want all the benefits of marriage then they should attach them to a ceremony of their own. Give it another name. Give it legal status. Make it available to all the churches and governments that are willing to embrace it. Give all the people that would like to support them something to celebrate with them. I have come to the conclusion that if the words “gay” and “marriage” are the only ones on the table then no matter how it plays out there will only be losers.
Lee Petersen, Gilroy
Submitted Tuesday, March 23 to ed****@****ic.com
