Reject vote to deny human rights

Friday, February 19, 2010

To the Editor:

In her letter published Feb. 12 regarding gay marriage, Mary Zore refers to “the inevitable re-education that would go into play following this decision. Schools, of course, will be obliged to provide textbooks supporting gay marriage and gay sexuality. This re-education of our children is, of course, key to any social change. It is also what concerns many people who question this change of definition.”

This is the tip of the spear, and Zore may have revealed herself sooner than she, and those behind the whole “let NH vote” scam, would want. Neither Zore nor anyone else involved in this petition drive can provide an example in any of the other four states where gay marriage has been recognized of any sort of indoctrination in public schools. There hasn’t been any.

Those advocating the unprecedented proposal to put basic human rights to a popular vote will not be stayed by any facts such as this. You need only observe what the campaigns in Maine, California and other states stooped to to know that the plan is to fool people with the “support democracy” and “let the people vote,” then run a fear campaign with unsupportable claims like Zore’s quote above.

Zore’s other argument, that marriage has been the same for thousands of years, is just as false. It isn’t even the same all over the world right now, and it has changed in the U.S. within our lifetime. Those differences abroad, and the changes to marriage here in the U.S., illustrate the basic flaw in the argument that gay marriage changes a sacred constant in our lives.

Here in the U.S., marriage between a man and a woman was not legal in many states if one spouse was white and one was black, or one Christian and one Jewish. That sad stain on our history was changed by state legislators voting those laws out of existence, often courageously against popular opinion.

What’s the definition of a legal marriage in India? In Saudi Arabia? There are many definitions of marriage worldwide. If you think the only definition that matters is one man and one woman, then by all means try living as a wife in Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan. I’m sure the fact that your marriage fits in a neat traditional box will be quite comforting. It will be just as reassuring, I’m sure, as you marry off your 12-year-old daughter in a “traditional” marriage in many parts of the world. All you need to know to sleep at night is that at least she didn’t marry a 60-year-old woman!

Zore and other opponents of gay marriage have a perfect right to their beliefs. They have a perfect right to define marriage in their churches and families. I would defend those rights to my death. Their right stops there, though. I have a right to call their beliefs what I believe them to be – prejudice.

I am counting on the traditional democratic process at town meetings to see the “let NH vote” crowd for what they are, and to let stand the existing law. I encourage those who agree to attend Town Meeting and add Brookline’s voice to those towns that have already rejected this attempt to subject a minority to a popular vote on their basic rights.

KEITH F. THOMPSON

Brookline