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- Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Valley&State Backpage O&E Sports Archives Classifieds Faith&Beliefs Obituaries Revels August 6, 2004 A matter of equal rights The hyperventilating and scare mongering of the conservative right never fails to amaze me when it comes to the issue of same-sex marriage. The only real argument that they seem to be able to advance is that the marriage between a man and a man or a woman and a woman will cause the immediate and irreversible destruction of civilization as noted by your guest forum writer on July 26. I'm not quite clear on how this is going to happen. The thousands of same-sex marriages that have taken place since this past spring in places like San Francisco, New York, New Mexico, Portland, Massachusetts (where it has been unquestionably sanctioned by the state) and Canada do not yet seem to have destroyed the world. When might I expect this "cultural chaos," as the previous writer called it, to begin? The issue of marriage equality (yes, that's the real issue here) is not at all about the collapse of society. It is about allowing two people who are committed to one another in the most basic way to express that commitment in a legally recognized method that does not discriminate by setting them apart from the rest of the population. It is about these two people being able to have the same legal rights afforded to heterosexual couples such as inheritance rights, hospital visitation rights, taxation benefits and many, many more. Your earlier forum writer cited that only "1 to 2 percent of the population is homosexual" and essentially, this is not a large enough number to be worthy of changing "traditional" marriage. I would dispute the low percentage she noted, but let us take that number anyway and make it real: o The current US population is about 290 million people. o One or two percent of this number would be 2.9 to 5.8 million people. o The current population of Oregon is about 3.5 million people. Is that writer prepared to say to a population that is equal to or, likely, larger than the entire state of Oregon, "you are too small a number to warrant a change in thinking"? Wow! Now maybe I'm being too liberal in my reasoning, but I can't imagine that happening with any other issue. As the previous writer noted, "this is not an issue of whether you agree with or support a homosexual lifestyle. It goes much deeper." It is an issue of equality. Whether or not marriage equality is achieved, there will always be same-sex couples living together. And, yes, believe it or not, they live and work along side you every day and you likely don't even know it and certainly are not affected by it. That they have a legally sanctioned marriage with all of the corresponding rights and benefits will not affect you in any way. Preventing them from being legally joined will not save the institution of marriage, nor will allowing it destroy marriage's sanctity. Discrimination has no place in either the Oregon or U.S. constitutions. This is what you really need to remember when you go to the polls. David Bjurstrom Ashland DailyTidings.com Home Page Valley&State | Backpage | O&E | Sports | Archives | Weather | Classifieds Columnists | Faith&Beliefs | Obituaries | Revels | Subscribe | Contact Us Copyright 2004 Ashland Daily Tidings and Ottaway Newspapers All Rights Reserved Click Here Site Search: .:Advertisements:. RESOURCES - Mail Tribune News - ODOT Road Cams