The reckless course to gay marriage

We, as the people of Illinois, are about to embark on a reckless societal experiment commonly called “gay marriage.”

We are told that it is necessary because those who are in same-sex relationships are lacking legal accommodations provided to those who are indeed married and out of a sense of fairness. The civil union law passed in Dec. 10, 2010, already provides all legal recognition of homosexual relationships in Illinois law.

Fairness is very subjective. It occurred to me how disturbed and upset my loving father and mother and my wife’s parents (now deceased) would have been to see the day that marriage was so redefined to include those relationships that can only poorly imitate the true complementary and child-producing qualities of heterosexual love.

Are all our ancestors, parents, and grandparents bigots and homophobes? Are all the supporters of the traditional definition of marriage from those of the World War II “greatest generation” to President Obama, who only in April 2012 changed his position, hateful and mean-spirited?

In the name of fairness, public discussion on this matter has been shut down by insults, intimidation, and isolation. There have been no reasoned arguments on how this will better our society or of discussion of the ramifications on school curriculum and voluntary business interaction. There has been no thinking on this matter except that of strategy and tactics on how to impose one’s will through raw political power.

It is not “fair” to rupture our society from its heritage based on thousands of years of understanding traditional marriage without doing the hard work of reason and persuasion. It will only result in division and oppression. Mike McKay

Wauconda