This is in response to James Wade's letter, "Civil, gay rights separate issues" (SN 3/4). First off, even though I don't agree with the letter, I'm happy to see that we finally get to see the other side of the gay rights issue. For weeks now, letters have only been coming from pro-gay rights viewpoints. Hearing the other side is good because it will help us all strengthen our own viewpoints and give people who don't know where to stand on the issue a broader outlook.

Now, I would like to point out some flaws in Wade's letter. First, a struggle is a struggle. Fighting for rights is fighting for rights. There is no difference between one person's fight for rights and another person's. True, blacks were not allowed to do things that whites could or, if they were allowed, it was on poorer terms and conditions. But while gays are not barred from drinking out of certain water fountains, they are barred from visiting their partner in the hospital, they are barred from adopting children, they are barred from certain tax benefits and they are barred from every other right that heterosexuals have when they get married. This is not a matter of special rights, but equal rights.

And what is not normal about a gay or lesbian relationship? It is one person loving another person - period. It is not about sex, for you can have sex with whomever you want. When people ask me why I am gay, I don't say, "Because I like to sleep with men." I say, "Because there is a part of me, an emotional and mental part, that I can't control just as a heterosexual can't control it, that connects with another man on a level that I can't connect with a woman, and I've tried to connect with women on that level." The Mormons and the marijuana users that Wade mentions have a choice, they can join a new faith or decide to stop smoking. I do not have a choice in whom I love.

Lastly, marriage is not about family, that is only one aspect of it. I am fed up with this argument. According to Wade's argument, the following people should not be able to get married because it would upset the "bedrock" that marriage creates: Heterosexual couples who get married and can't have children and heterosexual couples who get married and don't want to have children. Maybe it isn't about protecting marriage from the thousands of gay couples who have been together for decades, who have raised children together and created lives with one another. Rather, maybe we should focus on protecting it from people like Britney Spears who got married for 55 hours, then got divorced, or people who get divorced and are remarried a dozen times, or people who have children but neglect them, or people who have affairs in their marriages. It is these kinds of people who frighten me, because they are the ones who don't understand what marriage is about, yet our laws deny the rights to people who do.

Scott Howell
philosophy and religious studies sophomore