This letter is in response to all the people out there who think gay-rights issues can be compared to the civil-rights issues of the '50s and '60s. Let's take a look at the issue in the '50s. Blacks were barred from doing things that every white person was able to do every day: ride in the front of a bus, attend a good school, drink from a public drinking fountain, etc.

How are gay people barred from marriage? Every one of them has the right to get married, just not to whom he or she wants. If we allow this alternative lifestyle, how long until the ACLU and liberal lawyers around the country take up the Mormon argument? I can't imagine telling them it isn't OK that their lifestyle doesn't match the norm if we can't tell gays the same thing. Do all the recreational marijuana users call it a civil-rights issue because people who drink beer aren't charged with a crime?

The family is a basic building block of society, plain and simple, and if we assault the bedrock, we ultimately will affect the structure. It may not be apparent at the time, but it does have a negative effect on the whole. I don't care what gay people do in their homes, but 65 percent of people in this country are opposed for obvious reasons - no, we are not homophobes; we are not bigots. We simply have an opposing point of view and want the traditional American morality of families to remain intact.

James Wade
2000 graduate