After reading Jessica Byrom’s letter to the editor titled Only legally married couples deserve benefits (SN 11/5), I felt compelled to respond.
Perhaps Byrom needs to raise her head up just a tad and look out into the wide, wide world, where she will see, oh, just to our north a place called Canada where gay marriage is a legal right. Oh yes, are those Belgium, the Netherlands and South Africa I see across the pond (all with legalized same-sex marriage), followed by the United Kingdom, Finland, Spain, Denmark, France, Germany, Switzerland, Portugal, Iceland, New Zealand, Mexico, Norway and Sweden, too? You can find civil unions in Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut and even, (gasp!), gay marriages in Massachusetts and New Jersey (although it’s called a civil union in New Jersey, it carries the same legal rights as marriage).
Same-sex civil unions, marriage and domestic partnerships are legally recognized in many places here in the U.S. and around the world, including many employers, insurers and all sorts of grown-up types of institutions that involve money and power with the potential to discriminate and exclude.
Please be assured that the many countries and states that have legalized gay marriage or some derivative form of it have laid in place careful ground rules so you can’t legally marry your roommate, friend or close relative. Insurance companies and employers who offer domestic partnership benefits often ask for legal documentation of your relationship status prior to extending benefits. Wherever health insurance benefits may be legally extended to legally recognized partnerships, insurance companies are certain to conduct business. There is, after all, money to be made.
The relationship you share with your parents is not more or less valuable than that shared by a homosexual couple; however, your familial relationship is legally recognized, which is something gay couples around the world have been fighting for decades, with some success, to achieve.
I am hopeful for gay civil rights in Michigan and in the United States. Don’t despair, it truly is a good thing for people everywhere to obtain their full civil rights — just ask the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (or is that struggle still ongoing?).
Perhaps we should be talking about civil rights and better health care and environmental justice for everyone in this country — now that’s something I could get behind. How about it?
Madison Hall
forestry doctoral student
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