Same-Sex Marriages

* “Hawaii Justices Open Door to Legalizing Gay Marriages” (March 26) states that “the late Yale University historian John Boswell wrote that (premodern) religious ceremonies including blessings for same-sex couples in the early Catholic Church, a claim disputed by many church historians.” That is misleading. The dispute is not whether the ceremonies included blessings for same-sex couples--they unquestionably did--but whether the ceremonies constituted gay marriages.

In “Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe” Boswell explained that historians have long known about the same-sex union rites but tended to interpret them as platonic unions. He provided evidence and arguments for interpreting the unions as sexual and concluded that they were, in a modern sense of the term, gay marriages.

DENNIS L. TRUNK

Palmdale

* Why do gays and lesbians in this country have to be like dogs begging for table scraps of rights from legislatures? When will women in committed love relationships demand the same benefits and responsibilities given to others in opposite-sex marriages? When will thousands of gay men, who, like myself, had lovers die from AIDS-related illnesses, be given the same rights as people who have lost their spouses? When will young gays and lesbians, who have not grown up in an era that fostered self-hate, insist that they be given equal rights to be married?

I will tell you when. When 10,000 same-sex couples throughout this nation, march to their local marriage license bureau and demand a marriage license and do not leave until it is given to them. Come out, organize and it will happen.

RICHARD KOPELLE

Los Angeles