The gay and lesbian marriage movement, at the surface, appears to be an issue of fairness and equality, but in reality, it is just another initiative from the gay and lesbian community to force popular acceptance and legitimacy of their lifestyle. The “marriage” of a man to a man or a woman to a woman can never be legitimized no matter how it is framed.
Since this issue arose in the late 1970s in the U.S., gay and lesbian leaders have focused on the federal, state and local laws which, in their words, discriminated against gay and lesbian partnerships. They cited examples such as tax laws, medical information laws, public housing assistance requirements and inheritance laws as favoring heterosexual marriages. Some states actually passed laws addressing these issues, but that did not satisfy the gay and lesbian community because popular acceptance, not equality under the law, was (and still is) the goal.
The gay and lesbian community should not expect that popular acceptance of an abnormal sexual relationship between members of the same sex will ever happen regardless of the outcome of the Referendum 74 vote.
Stan Livingston
Vancouver
