Letters in the OC

The Orange County Register has been running letters about the California Marriage Amendment. There are plenty in this batch. A couple of them caught my eye.

[It's all below the fold if you care to read it.]

Daniel Bartkowski of La Mirada wrote:

The issue has to do with a crass demand that the definition of what constitutes a marriage be changed to satisfy a purely political agenda – an agenda to force all of society to sanction a particular arrangement that's based solely upon sexual proclivities. Marriage has been recognized by any number of societies since time immemorial because it is the most fundamental of all social units. All other social units are patterned after that model.

He goes on to point out that divorce is not a justification for neutering marriage:

Failures are not a reflection of there being a problem with the model, but with there being a problem with the participants. Same-sex unions are not, and can never be, a fundamental social unit and no society is under any obligation to accord such unions a status or recognition that's been granted to the fundamental unit.

He also examines the race card (See I.C.):

Finally, the issue is not a civil rights issue either. To attempt to equate it as such is dissembling at its worst. Correctly overturning restrictions based on ethnic origins weren't trying to change the definition of marriage. They were still unions between a man and a woman.

He is unsually good for a printed letter on this subject.

Elise Power of Garden Grove wrote:

How about just accept it, stop being so threatened by it, and just get out of their way when they wish to formalize their commitment to someone they love?

Get on with your life, and let them get on with theirs.

In other words, she is calling us to sit down and shut up while a minority makes a major change to licenses that are issued on our behalf. Same-sex couples can do everything anyone else does, especially in California, including be legally treated like spouses. But they can't force us to neuter our marriage licensing against our will, or at least they haven't been able to. And we should not be passive as they try.