Gay-marriage bans - This one really is black and white

Here's a line from a letter in today's (6/6/06) L.A. Times. The writer favors a same-sex marriage ban.

"The family is the fundamental cell of society and has its source in marriage."

Now, I don't think that this observation is beyond argument by any means, but what really baffles me is that anti-gay zealots see it as persuasive to their position. Consider these paragraphs from two homosexual letter-writers in the same section:

"According to President Bush, I'm a threat to society. I live in Burbank with my partner and our two girls. We are employed, pay taxes, vote and, besides a random parking ticket, obey the law. I'm an American, and I even have a family: a mother, a father, two sisters, nieces, nephews, grandparents, aunts, uncles, a wife and two kids. We even have two dogs."

and:

"So now the Senate takes up the so-called Marriage Protection Amendment to protect marriage from me. I'm gay. I'm in love with a wonderful man, and we've been together nine years this week. We are blessed to be raising a daughter, who just learned in preschool that in America we believe in liberty and justice for all, and how we're all created equal. There are already laws preventing my legal marriage. And just like those embarrassing laws against inter-racial marriage, isn't that enough for all our kids to look back and wonder how people could be so prejudiced?"

Seem like just the kind of people we want getting married and contributing to the "fundamental cell of our society," don't they? Yet the anti-gay writer would ferociously oppose their legalized unions. That's because by his logic the "fundamental cell" is perverted when gays lie at its center, not because they do not uphold the tenets of good, productive marriage, but because they are gay.

So the anti-gay rhetoric is once again exposed for what it is - prejudice, plain and simple. The underlying reality here is that there are, to my knowledge, no arguments against legalized gay marriage that do not reduce to ignorant discrimination.

Support for gay-marriage bans is a clear-cut case of socially acceptable bigotry flourishing in a country that prides itself on freedom and justice. It is an obvious wrong against which all sane voices should be raised.