Letters: As the Court Ponders Gay Marriage

Re "Justices Say Time May Be Wrong for Ruling on Gay Marriage" (front page, March 27):

For those of us who are gay, and who suffer discrimination and put up with second-class status on the issue of marriage every single day, there is no such thing as acting too quickly to secure our right to marriage equality. To think that the Supreme Court would refrain from doing the right thing simply out of concern for what others will think or fear is unconscionable to those of us who want nothing more than to be treated equally under the law.

My message to the court: If justice is truly blind, prove it.

HYAM KRAMER
Jamaica Plain, Mass., March 27, 2013

To the Editor:

Justices who fear that a decision in favor of the rights of gays and lesbians to marry would get too far out in front of society's current mind-set would do well to remember that the Supreme Court moved to address a similar fear in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. Isn't that how we got the infamous phrase "with all deliberate speed," which permitted school districts to prolong the injustice of unequal education for many years?

The justices need to enforce our constitutional rights regardless of the longstanding prejudices of those who oppose them.

TONI OLIVIERO

Jackson Heights, Queens

March 27, 2013

To the Editor:

In the oral arguments concerning California's ban on same-gender marriage, Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr., Anthony M. Kennedy and Antonin Scalia cited considerable disagreement and a lack of data regarding the issue of whether harm is done to a child adopted by a same-gender couple. These comments are seemingly in contrast to the American Academy of Pediatrics' policy statement released last week in favor of same-gender marriage.

The policy statement came about as a result of more than 30 years of research showing no causal relationship between parents' sexual orientation and their children's well-being, making the child-welfare-centered arguments against same-gender marriage seem at best uninformed and at worst disingenuous. Allowing same-gender couples to marry, according to the pediatrics' academy, will promote children's physical, social and mental health.

CHRIS KIM
Atlanta, March 27, 2013

The writer is a student at the Emory University School of Medicine.

To the Editor:

As a lawyer who concentrated in constitutional law in law school, I favor full and equal rights for gay couples, but this legally recognized relationship cannot be called "marriage" without hijacking and destroying the meaning of that term.

However deeply two men or two women love each other, whatever they do behind closed doors, they cannot be engaged in "matrimony," as that word has been used since the 13th century.

Gender identification is basic to marriage. "Gay marriage" cannot be "marriage" because it is not the union of a "husband" and a "wife."

JOSEPH TARANTINO
Northampton, Mass., March 27, 2013

To the Editor:

Opposition to gay marriage rights is rooted in a scriptural definition of marriage as between a man and a woman. Isn't this an intrusion of religious values into state functions and a violation of separation of church and state?

The state should issue and recognize only civil unions between legally consenting adults, governing legal issues such as property ownership or power of attorney. A "marriage" should be conducted by a person's spiritual leader for that person and his or her partner of choice. The government has no business defining a marriage.

BILL CONROD
Grand Junction, Colo., March 27, 2013

To the Editor:

As the child of two mothers, I read David Cole's March 26 Op-Ed article, "Deciding Not to Decide Gay Marriage," with great chagrin. If history has taught us anything, it is that action is the sine qua non of change. Mr. Cole, however, advocates inaction because "in the long run, national recognition of same-sex marriage is inevitable." Surely the end of slavery was inevitable, but we fought a war; the end of segregation was inevitable, but needed to be carried out by the National Guard.

The purpose of Roe v. Wade and Brown v. Board of Education was not to convince society of the rightness of abortion or racial equality, but to enact, in law, the protection of our rights to freedom and equality. To advocate inaction, to let same-sex marriage "propagate organically," is to condone inequality indefinitely. That is certainly not the moral choice.

GERRIT LANSING
Somerville, Mass., March 26, 2013

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