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Show 6 FRIDAY, MARCH 10, THE DAILY UTAH CHRONICL! 2000 Rethink Editor: In his letter of March 7, Matt Ball argues against extending the right to marriage and the right to have children to gay couples. He bases his argument on a purported distinction between "natural rights" and "civil rights." That distinction, however, gets us nowhere. Any right we have exists because the state has chosen to recognize it and to protect it. Some rights are recognized by courts as existing by virtue of our Constitution or common law, Other rights are embodied in statutes enacted by legislatures. It is meaningless, however, to denominate the former "natural," and the latter "civil." Is the right of an person to be free from racial discrimination natural or civil? In common parlance, we generally refer to that right as "civil," though in fact it flows (according to the United States Supreme Court) from our Constitution's equal protection clause. If African Americans had to wait until the majority chose to extend that "civil" right, as Mr. Ball argues gays should, the vicious Black Codes might still exist in the South today. African-America- Logic Existing Civil Eights Civil-Righ- ts n Equally problematic is Mr. Ball's lack of awareness that marriage has, in fact, been declared to be a "fundamental" right by the Supreme Court In Loving v. Virginia, the Court said, "The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free rncn. Marriage is one of the 'basic civil rights of man,' fundamental to our very existence and survival." There is simply no basis in reason to deny this fundamental couples. right to loving, same-se- x Furthermore, if Mr. Ball's argument is correct that the right to have children should be extended only to those who can "anatomically" bear children, then infertile and elderly opposite-secouples have no greater claim to be parents than do same-secouples. With respect to Mr. Ball's gratuitous, homophobic insult at the end of his letter, I would urge him to read the myriad of social science studies that demonstrate that same-se- x couples are, in fact, as loving parents as opposite-secouples. x x x TERRY S. KOGAN Professor, Colieqe of Law GOT A BEEF 150 WITH TURTLE continued from page 5 RACING? est teachers in the history of the university. That these two renowned faculty members were left off the 150 most significant list is shameful. BRUCE M. LAN'DESMAN Associate Professor, Philosophy Write a letter to the editor on behalf of your amphibious friends. leUerschronicIs.utah.edu Are you terrified of being Have you gone on eating binges where you feel you may not be able to stop? Do you feel extremely guilty after eating? Do you vomit or have th impulse to vomit after meals? Editor Allow me to reicerate for the Liberd benefit of the als; who just don't seem to get it, that civil rights are crested by the state. The Equal Protection Clause found in the Fourteenth Amendment, on which Kurt Wackfoid bases his objecaon to my earlier letter, makes it dear that the state may not "deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." I'll take it real slowly from this point so that the likes of Wackford and Coles can keep up. What the Equal Protection Clause s?ys is that once a law is created, it must net be applied For example, if the state chooses to sanction a marriage between Peter and Paul, it must also sanction a marriage weak-minde- con- The Mood Disorders Clinic at the University of Utah Health Sciences Center is conducting research for peo ple who suffer from Please call ways. Way don't we hear children whimpering about eqtia! protection and discrimination? The majority recognizes that it would be lunacy to grant the right to drive to children, &rd clearly the majority of California, by passing Fropositioa 21, feels the same way about legitimizing homosexuality. MATT BALL Student. College of Law Are Sex Roles Healthy For Kids ? Editor: Ahh yes, the idea! family. Mom is sitting in the kitchen waiting for the food she has prepared to finish cocking. She reads the latest edition of Readers Digest, or maybe Redbook. Father is out in the garage, teaching his young adopted son the inner workings of his SUV. They go over the engine with meticulous detail Later, as the young adopted son grows, he learns to love sports from his father and to respect his mother, as a woman. He learns to know his role and his place in society. His gay uncle teaches him tolerance and that while some people choose to live an "alternative lifestyle," they are not to be hated or shunned just denied the right to marry, and thus denied the ability to adopt a child. In his March 3 opinion column, Jared Anderson does not paint as cheesy a picture as I have just labored to do. He does, however, imply everything that has been stated. According to the column, each child deserves an ideal family a family where the child has male and female roie models to teach the adopted child basic social values as well as give him or her a sense of right and wrong. Whose ideal is Anderson referring to? Whose sense of right and wrong gets to be thought of as the ideal? Better yet, what family can possibly live up to the new legal label of ideal? In the world that House Bill 13 creates, only a single person or a family consisting of two adults of opposite gender that exist in a legal, long-terrelationship can adopt a child. This excludes gay and lesbian couples, or couples living together that are not recognized by the state as legally married. The reasoning is that these relationships are not stable or perhaps violate a law, such as the sodomy law, or the law that prohibits fornication. While the validity or invalidity of these laws is an interesting question, I am more concerned with the attitudes and insinuations created by such a ban on who can adopt children. This bill is m Do you feel that food trols your life? between Janet and Jane. Until the stale chooses to sanction a marriage, between Peter and Paul, the Foureuth Aaiendment is ' silent on the matter: Civil rights etc only protected when they exist. Another example: The state permits adults to drive on our highways; the atate does not allow children to drive on our high- saying that only those in a heterosexual environment can possibly create a loving, stable place for a child to be raised in; it also implies that a single mother or father could not possibly be as good for a child as a married couple, and that, while a gay or lesbian person, according to Anderson, is best served by being an aunt or uncle, he or she can in no way teach or raise a child in a manner that would be appropriate in an ideal family. Anderson has a valid point that a child needs both male and female role models in order to learn how to exist in society, it is not clear, however, that those models must live in the same household. Why couldn't the gay or lesbian couple serve as parents, while the heterosexual couple served the function of aunt or uncle? To imply that there are roles that can only be learned by one gender is ridiculous. Must the man teach testosterone-baseaggression or the love of sports while the mother teaches one to nurture and to love? These roles are not limited to one gender and rarely fall along those lines. The ideal of which Anderson speaks is shaky. The bill wants to place children in a home with a mother and a father, where that child can be taught what is right and what is wrong. It seems obvious what the Utah State Legislature says is right and wrong, and in turn what Anderson believes is right and wrong. Unmarried couples are wrong, gays and lesbians are wrong, and households are wrong: while good couimplies heterosexual, thus a ideal, exist who in stable, ples relationship. The next question is: What if the "stable" couple ends up divorced, or one parent dies in some horrible tragedy? Does the state then reserve the right to remove these children and place them in a more suitable environment? Why does Anderson state that since foster children have already decided what much of the world is like, that they can be adopted by anyone? It is clear that certain, undesirable traits must be weaned out of the culture, and the best way to ensure this is to limit what persons are allowed to teach the adopted children and what values they can be taught. Therefore, those unfortunate foster children cannot be "fixed" and can then live in these corrupt and dangerous households, where evil and wrong ideas prevail. It makes me wonder if the real fear is not that a child might not grow up in a loving, healthy, happy home, but that certain ideas and ways of life might be reinforced in the minds of children. After ail, it is one thing to tolerate something from afar; it is another thing altogether to allow it to be seen as normal, or even valid. d single-pare- nt God-feari- RYAN CARTY Senior, English |