Can Same-Sex Marriage Harm the Institution?
Re “The Right Can’t Win This Fight,” by Max Boot, Commentary, May 20: The right must win this fight -- for the children. Same-sex marriage suggests that children do not benefit from having a father and a mother. Death, divorce, abandonment, a single parent’s mistakes -- any one of these deprives children of a mother or father. But only same-sex marriage would legally ensure that children are deprived from birth of either a mother or a father.
It is dishonest to claim that although children may not be better off, they will be just as well off with two fathers and no mother or two mothers and no father. Does anyone really believe that a mother is useless if a child has two fathers, or that a father is unnecessary if a child has two mothers? Men and women contribute entirely different attributes to rearing children. And, consider the immediate effect on all our children: sex education in school, which begins in the fourth and fifth grades. If same-sex marriage becomes “normal,” then our youngsters will have to be taught about same-sex sex. Yikes!
Jo Anne Fogarty
Los Angeles
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Though I basically agree with Boot, and he makes several good points on this hotly debated topic, I need to correct one comment he makes in the next-to-last paragraph. He says, “Homosexuality always has been and always will be the preference of a tiny minority; most of us are biologically hard-wired for heterosexuality.” Being gay is not a preference or a choice. I suggest that if one is hard-wired for heterosexuality, then it is also likely that one can be equally hard-wired for being gay. The only choice that is ever made is to be true to ourselves. Plus, why is being gay always called a preference when that same word is never used in connection with being a heterosexual?
Bill Garlin
Long Beach
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I can understand why some people cannot tolerate same-sex marriages, but not why anyone feels threatened by them or feels the institution of marriage is being threatened. The “sacredness” of marriage is a religious construct and has no place in the civil laws of a democratic country. The institution of heterosexual marriage will not be put asunder by providing the same status to same-sex couples. As many of these couples are having families, adopted or otherwise, marriage will only strengthen those families.
Those who seek to restrict the individual freedoms of others whose actions do others no harm should direct their energies elsewhere to benefit people in need. Focus instead on the many man-woman marriages that are falling apart and need help. There’s plenty of work to be done in that area, and as many more of those marriages involve children, they should be the priority of groups seeking to “protect” the institution of marriage.
Valerie Sexton
Irvine