In a July 27 commentary, Portland Oregonian associate editor David Reinhard wrote that gays should be content with a tattered patchwork of half-baked legal rights instead of fairness in civil marriage.
Reinhard also said that any comparison of racial discrimination and antigay discrimination “confuses an immutable trait (race) with a behavior (homosexuality) whose nature and origin are, at the least, in dispute. The analogy also ignores the clear, longstanding religious and moral objections to homosexuality.”
Steve Swayne, an assistant professor of music at Dartmouth College and a contributing writer at the Independent Gay Forum, responded that gays should not have to wait decades for a patchwork of rights to take solid form. Swayne adds:
Reinhard must forget the longstanding religious and moral objections to colored people. In addition, he might want to ask someone who is both black and gay how we view the analogy.
I chose neither to be black nor to be gay. Both are part of who am I and precede what I choose to do or not do. The analogy is perfectly sound to me.
Meanwhile, another letter writer notes that Reinhard’s objections to non-procreative marriages hurt heterosexual couples, too.
And a Portland minister recalls performing more than 100 gay weddings over 28 years.
Oregonian columnist Margie Boule writes the story a gay Oregon couple’s trip to Canada to get married. Her conclusion:
In a world where straight people often take marriage too lightly, Marc and Floyd celebrate the institution.
The Interfaith Working Group offers an excellent summary of the case it frequently makes to the media in favor of fairness for gays in civil marriage.