Letters to the Editor

Way too good to pass up. So, here’s the letter by Godfrey Tudor-Matthews, Eureka printed in the Sunday, November 23, 2008 issue: Differentiation between distinction and discrimination.

Vive la difference. Opponents of Proposition 8 seem somewhat myopic in their failure to make an appropriate (and I should like to stress the word appropriate) differentiation between distinction and discrimination.

As an employer, if I refuse to hire a secretary or other employee for any reason other than qualification, I could be accused, and all things being equal possibly rightly so, of discrimination. If, on the other hand, I provide two toilets: one for male, the other for female employees, and label the outside of the two doors accordingly, am I being discriminatory? The answer, of course, is “yes”; but I am recognizing the different needs of the two sexes and making a distinction between them.

If we understand the purpose for the establishment of marriage to be primarily that of procreation and the establishment of a stable, protective environment for the offspring, it becomes obvious that “same sex marriage” is a contradiction in terms. It is verbal camouflage.

That the law should provide a means for two people who love each and desire to live together, to co-mingle their assets and enjoy the privileges of a legal partnership is indisputable. But it should not be called a “marriage,” neither should the rites of marriage be performed over nor conferred upon what would thus be basically a legal contractual agreement.

Offspring are not entailed in such an arrangement, thus there are no requirements for assumption of joint names for the establishment of a family tree and its concomitant hereditaments.