Gay Rights -- We've Come a Long Way

[We have come a long way towards full respect for the rights of people who prefer establishing close personal relationships with loved ones of the same gender. I recall having to be educated myself and the ironies of persecution of gays by such as FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover who turned out apparently to be gay himself as was McCarthy and a number of the Nazi leaders who persecuted gays back then.

The sad fact is that a so-called Christian saint unleashed the vicious attacks on both gays and Jews by his horrendous and hateful characterizations -- See Paul's Letter to the Romans. The ancient Hebrews also opposed same gender relationships -- to distinguish themselves from competing cultures and religious which tolerated and even sometimes featured such relationships -- read the Socratic dialogues -- particularly the Symposium which discusses varieties of love. Here again this ugly prejudice is a hangover from primitive ancient religious and cultural roots. We no longer execute children who disobey their parents and a host of other draconian punishments for alleged crimes.

Let us hope that the attempts to outlaw gay marriages will fail. This nation is too much obsessed with sex which is not the issue here -- it is the right of people to form loving relationships. Given the number of people left out of the marriage game, such relationships protected by law are the only way to go. We now have many gay couple friends and know of many who have formed such relationships in older years when a marriage has been ended by death or divorce. No one should be obliged to live alone without full legal protections for that relationship.

May the bigots and haters be rejected in their efforts to abuse their neighbors! Ed Kent]

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California Supreme Court Overturns Gay Marriage Ban
By ADAM LIPTAK
The ruling, striking down laws limiting marriages to unions
between a man and a woman, would make California the second
state to allow same-sex marriage.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/16/us/16marriage.html?th&emc=th
--
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