It is ironic that those who have been most eager to mislabel the effort to secure equal rights for homosexuals as a quest for "special rights" are now leading proponents of laws and constitutional amendments to preserve the special rights of married heterosexuals.In compliance with our constitutional separation of church and state, perhaps government should get completely out of the marriage business and leave protection of the "sanctity" and "sacred, sacramental character" of marriage to religious denominations. Of course, this would entail removing all of the special legal incidents that currently flow from marriage. Then, in compliance with our constitutional guarantees of equal protection and due process, and in the interest of avoiding the inherent inequality of "separate but equal" and of promoting true "family values" that do not include hatred and discrimination, those incidents would attach to government-instituted "civil unions" open to both opposite-sex and same-sex couples. Depending upon the rules of their particular religious denomination, such couples still might, but need not, get married in religious ceremonies.Thus we could disentangle government from sectarian disputes over what God wants, while following the biblical directive to "render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's."
Lawrence Bradleyclass of '60March 20
