Gay Marriage Ruling Doesn’t End the Debate

Re “Judge Rules State Can’t Bar Gay Marriage,” March 15: The activist right is at it again, trying to reinterpret the Constitution. Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) says the California judge’s ruling “supports the need for a constitutional amendment to protect marriage ... for the good of families, children and society.”

Senator, reread your constitutional history. The equal protection clause was ingeniously created by the founders to protect not the majority, which doesn’t need the protection, but the minority against the tyranny of the majority.

The judge’s ruling is for the good of thousands of gay families and for the families of natural, adopted and foster kids parented by gay couples. Santorum and the evangelicals would have us retreat to the days of “separate but equal” and bans on interracial marriage. That was “for the good of society”?

How can they possibly support the disparate treatment of Social Security benefits, estate tax exemptions, joint tax brackets, medical insurance benefits and on and on for straights as opposed to gays? If “equal protection” doesn’t apply in this instance, where would it apply?

Ken Goldman

Beverly Hills

California’s Constitution supports, and assumes, marriage as the union of one man and one woman. Nonetheless, San Francisco Superior Court Judge Richard Kramer has surrendered to homosexual activists’ efforts to radically restructure the family institution and ruled that the state Constitution has “no legitimate reason” to limit marriage to couples of the opposite sex.

Sadly, California’s court has gutted marriage of its obvious and traditional meaning.

Alarmingly, a few radical attorneys, politicians and non-elected, activist judges want to mold marriage into their own image and have tentatively redefined marriage in California to include same-sex couples. Why can’t they understand that when God created marriage, it was for Adam and Eve and not for Adam and Steve?

Gary Curtis

Granada Hills