A few choice words
Re “Gay pride and prejudice,” Editorial, Aug. 30
The Times is spot-on. Whenever this topic comes up in conversation and the other person opines that being gay is a preference undeserving of legal protection, I have two stock replies.
The short version is: “No, it is not a lifestyle choice like religion.”
The long version is: “You’re right, gay people are naturally heterosexual, but they choose a lifestyle that goes against their own natural desires to subject themselves daily to religious persecution, estrangement from family, inability to marry, discrimination in housing and employment, threats of physical violence or even death, and then lie about their choice by insisting they were born that way.”
Either ends the conversation, without fail.
Steven Daniel Groth
Oceanside
--
Regarding the argument that “sexual orientation is a matter of simple choice”: What religion one chooses to practice is a choice.
And for those who argue that the gay civil rights struggle shouldn’t be compared to the black civil rights struggle, I say: Blacks were finally given their due not because they were enslaved and mistreated but because they are human beings, deserving the same rights and privileges of all human beings.
The same goes for gays and lesbians: We deserve our rights not because of how we’ve been discriminated against but because we are human beings.
Justin Akin
West Hollywood
--
Where in the Constitution does it say gays and lesbians don’t have rights like everybody else? Even the Catholic Church acknowledges homosexual orientation. It just does not sanction homosexual behavior.
The rest of us don’t care what two people do in the privacy of their bedrooms. This current push, to allow two members of the same sex to marry, is a political move that makes a mockery out of marriage.
If it ever becomes law, marriage has no meaning except what lawyers say it is.
Robert S. Rodgers
Culver City
--
In your editorial, you ignore two basic truths: One, there can be no pride in immoral conduct; two, prejudice against this immoral behavior is just, not unjust.
To say that the homosexual lifestyle is acceptable is a triumph of political correctness, not of sanity or morality.
Rafael Villa
Brea