Same-Sex Marriage Ban

* Re “Measure to Ban Gay Marriages OKd for Ballot,” Nov. 18:

The bad news regarding state Sen. Pete Knight’s (R-Palmdale) initiative is that even at the turn of the new millennium we lesbian and gay couples will have to spend our precious energy and resources battling yet another hateful proposition, as his proposition finds its place on the March 2000 ballot. We are the only minority group left that, as a whole, must constantly prove we are as normal as the rest of our fellow citizens.

The good news is that, with no lesson learned from this year’s elections, the Republican Party continues its politics of hate and division, and in November 2000 the Democrats will likely continue to build their Assembly-Senate majority and assume control of California’s congressional delegation. Thank you, Pete Wilson and Pete Knight, for making California what it is today.

KEITH and NEIL COFFMAN-GREY

Central Coast Marriage Project

Santa Barbara

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Next month, I will be married and it warms my heart to be able to legitimize and legalize my commitment to the woman I love. No one has yet explained adequately how two people of the same gender marrying would, in any way, undermine or affect my marriage.

Are we really to believe that it is preferable for us as a society to have a class of people engaging in clandestine sex? Would it not be better to have those people in committed and monogamous relationships? The opposition to same-sex marriages is nothing more than institutionalized homophobia. Let’s live and let live.

STEVE MARSHALL

Agoura Hills

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When two people stand up at an altar or under a chuppah, it’s nobody’s business, except to each other, what they look like without their clothes on. All that matters is that one person wears a tux and the other a gown and the best man does not kiss the groom. And if one of those kids up there happen to be yours, you can do what people have done at weddings since the beginning of time, cry.

MEL HORVITZ

El Segundo