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The New York Times
Same-Sex Marriage:
Parsing the Arguments
(1 Letter)
Letter to the Editor,
nytimes from the Web, June 27, 2007
To the Editor:
Re “A Liberal Explains His Rejection of Same-Sex Marriage,” by Peter Steinfels
(Beliefs column, June 23):
If there’s anything liberal in David Blankenhorn’s arguments against same-sex
marriage, it went right by us. His opposition to same-sex marriage rests
upon two familiar conservative notions: the view that interventive
“protection” rather than encouragement is the best way to bolster the presumably
threatened institution of marriage (the same foundation on which conservatives
stood decades ago when they opposed racial intermarriage); and the idea that gay
marriage is insufficiently “pro-child” to merit legitimation.
Significantly, Mr. Blankenhorn does not extend this second argument, which
insults so many gay parents, to childless heterosexual couples. The basis
of the discrimination he advocates, in other words, is homosexuality.
“Liberal” Mr. Blankenhorn reassures us that he isn’t a bigot and proposes an
“interesting new conversation” in which same-sex couples who want to marry can
learn to stop misjudging the people who would deprive us of the legal
protections heterosexuals enjoy.
But the solution to our disenfranchisement is not a more amiable conversation
with those who seek to perpetuate it, whatever their self-justifying pieties.
We call ourselves married, but we’re not, legally, and we want to be.
We’re fans of the Declaration of Independence, the 14th Amendment and Brown
v. Board of Education, and we want equal treatment under the law.
Mark Harris
Tony Kushner, New York, June 23, 2007
(Emphasis Added)
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