TO THE EDITOR:
In your "A Step Backward" editorial (Nov. 11), you linked same-sex "hate crimes" to legislative initiatives in Nebraska and Nevada defending heterosexual marriage. Do you have any data to support such linkages, or is your position entirely conjectured? For example, have "hate crimes" decreased in states where progressive laws sanctioning same-sex partnerships have occurred, such as Hawaii and Vermont?
Stepping back from accusatory rhetoric, let's consider other possibilities than prejudice or "hate" as the motivation for legislation that preserves a traditional view of marriage. The gay lobby's efforts to reduce marriage to a legal status with privileges doesn't persuade, because many people do not consider marriage as simply a "head count" legal arrangement between two individuals, no matter how committed they are.
Traditionalists view matrimony as unique to heterosexuality, not because of bigotry, but because of substantive social valuation of committed male-female relationships. Most Americans view marriage as the unique social recognition of the committed union of man and woman, valued because its essence is a unity of the opposite sexes. Its social contribution is not only human social stability but also a demonstrably natural and protective arrangement for producing and nurturing children. Philosophers have characterized this as valuing "the state of matrimony," which one enters as a social compact through marital vows. This valued social compact is the basis for legal sanction. In this view, gays and lesbians are not viewed as lesser people or citizens, but they simply cannot enter a social compact that doesn't apply to them sexually, even if they are a stable committed couple.
In short, homosexuals can neither fully claim nor borrow heterosexual social capital, and dissembling legal maneuvers to claim that they are the same in every respect except the substantive male-female compact is not persuasive. Hence, the response of the people in Hawaii and Vermont, who have since taken steps to reverse the progressive legal stance in their states, should not be considered "hate" anymore than the views of pro-marriage supporters in Nevada and Nebraska. People supporting marriage are not necessarily devaluing homosexuality per se. Like me, they may simply have never heard a convincing argument that homosexuality, on its own merits, warrants the same kind of social and legal support that heterosexual marriage has received for centuries.
Joanne Beckman
Graduate Student
School of Nursing
