Incredibly, Oregon’s constitutional amendment against homosexual marriage could be immediately overturned by a Republican-appointed federal judge in California. (“Prop 8 trial focuses on kids,” Jan. 17.)
Surprisingly, the lawyer who initiated the California lawsuit in support of gay marriage is Ted Olson, whose wife was killed in the Sept. 11 terrorist attack and who is a lifelong Republican who served in both Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush’s administrations.
Olson is ably answering questions about same-sex marriage, including those posed in a Feb. 22, 2004 editorial by Hasso Hering, “Marriage, law, discrimination ... ” For example, some marriage restrictions have rational reasons, such as not allowing marriage between close relatives to prevent birth defects. Other restrictions, such as barring polygamy, apply equally to everyone.
Promoting procreation is a rational reason for marriage, but opposite-sex marriage between infertile couples is both common and legal. Olson believes that a government promoting procreation by banning same-sex marriages is “pernicious” as discouraging procreation like China does.
Olson’s “Newsweek” essay, “The Conservative Case for Gay Marriage,” finds no rational reason to bar same-sex marriages. I agree with Olson that conservatives should celebrate gays want to share in the conservative ideals of marriage.
Thomas Kraemer
Corvallis
Um, I see everyone is commenting elsewhere. Is this blog dead now?
ReplyDeleteI agree with the letter. There's still more comments coming in other threads on this blog.
ReplyDeleteWell, you guys have posted alot to the Ugly Comments section, which is good to see them all there...they get removed from the GT. I thought about compiling some of them in a letter to Lee Enterprises, but I don't know if it is worth the fight, to be honest. But there hasn't been much discussion on other threads.
ReplyDeleteThe online comments section has not improved in the slightest with people being banned. In fact in has probably gotten worse, especially since the offenders simply come back as another person. I don't think I can participate. Plus, there's the whole boycott thing, giving that lousy paper my time and attention, etc.
Keep up the fight.
Thanks, I have mixed feelings about contributing to the GT.
ReplyDeleteI hope this blog isn't dead. Hopefully just sleeping a bit.
I understand. It is difficult to let the discussion, even on the GT, go one-sided.
ReplyDeleteI hope this blog is just resting as well, as long as it's not Rumpelstiltskin
So, I did an archive search just now to see if any additional discussion was going on on this letter. All of the comments have been removed, no discussion at all has been left up.
ReplyDeleteGood? Bad?
It may have been the GT version. The Sunday letters show up in both papers sites, for some reason.
ReplyDeleteI'm still in the DH thread with Steve.
http://www.democratherald.com/news/opinion/mailbag/article_2dcff456-09cd-11df-a4b9-001cc4c002e0.html?mode=comments
Thanks and good job on countering Steve.
ReplyDelete