LETTER: Words cannot be changed

Editor,

With the highest Massachusetts court’s ruling, the legality of gay marriage is hanging by a thread. Support is building on both sides. The Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest gay advocacy group, merrily announced a week ago that it had raised $155,000 from 3,100 donors since the ruling. It is scary to me to realize what this publicity will do for the gay effort. On the other side, opponents of the legalization of gay marriage have energized their efforts to protect the sanctity of this institution. They are proposing an amendment that will ban gay marriage.

Words mean something. Since the beginning of time, the word marriage has meant unity between a man and a woman. One cannot just change the definition of that word on a whim. It is a term reserved only for a bond between a man and a woman. Liberal gay advocates are asking us to debase the term marriage in order to make their choice of lifestyle legitimate. Go ahead and call the union of gays something … anything else. But America should not cater to a minute segment of the population by altering a word of significant meaning.

Remember, I am not attacking gay relationships. I am saying that by changing the definition of marriage you would be giving gays the right to benefits that are not and should never be theirs. Where will we draw the line? Soon we will have a society in which marriages are contracts of convenience. This will prove very costly to society, not only morally, but financially.

Now can you see the effects legalization of gay marriage will have on society? By changing the definition of marriage to include marriage between, say, a man and a man, we are diminishing the sense that a woman should be married to the father of her children. Out-of-wedlock births would certainly increase. And the relation between marriage and sexual fidelity would be ruined.

Words mean something. They cannot and should not be changed.

Callie Taggart