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Open Forum: Why Minnesota needs a Marriage Amendment
I would like to respond to a letter published in the Feb. 20 issue of the Dispatch. The writer suggested that pursuing a defense of marriage amendment is a waste of time and money because Minnesota already has a law prohibiting same-sex marriage.
I strongly disagree. If we could trust our state courts to leave the work of legislating to the people and their elected representatives, then we would have nothing to worry about. But the cold, hard facts tell us otherwise.
In the past seven years, state courts in Massachusetts, Vermont, Hawaii, California, New York, Washington, and Oregon have in varying, but unprecedented ways overturned traditional marriage laws. In response, voters in 19 states have felt it necessary to pass constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage, including Hawaii and Oregon, which are not conservative states. Furthermore, at least eight states are currently facing lawsuits that challenge their traditional marriage laws. It is therefore a gross misrepresentation of the facts to say Minnesota does not need a constitutional amendment.
And this mischief in the state courts is occurring despite the fact that not one state legislature has been willing to pass a law allowing same-sex marriage and the majority of Americans, according to poll after poll, oppose it. In Minnesota, according to a 2005 Mason-Dixon poll, 61 percent of voters say they support a constitutional amendment that would prohibit same-sex marriage.
Informal polling indicates that that percentage is even higher in District 12A. In 2004 and in 2005, the Minnesota House passed a bill that would put such an amendment on the ballot this year, but the DFL-controlled Senate has yet even to take a public vote on the question. Whose interests are they serving? It's not the people of our district, or of our state.
Rep. Paul Gazelka
District 12A
Rural Brainerd
The story behind the stolen jacket
This is to the thief, who stole our son's grey winter jacket at BMC March 2. I would like to tell you, about the young man whose jacket you stole. He was born with a heart defect, and operated on, in Rochester, when he was one-day old. After laying in the hospital for several months, fighting infection in his incision, he got spinal meningitis. After many more weeks of much prayer, he survived and we brought our baby home. However, it left him mentally and physically handicapped.
While he was at BMC being fitted for a body brace to help him sit erect in his wheel chair, and temporarily out of his private examination room, you somehow saw his jacket and took it for your own. You must have rationalized that you deserved it more than he did. He works, every day, at the DAC in Baxter. With what he can do, he earns $1 to $2 a week so a new jacket would cost him a year's wages.
Did you not think, that the person whose jacket you stole, would have to go home in the cold with nothing warm to cover his body? When you found one red cap and only one mitten in the pocket, did you wonder why only one mitten? That is because his one arm/hand is paralyzed so he holds it inside his jacket for warmth.
We thought that we would enlighten you, as to the history behind the new grey jacket, that you took for your own. If you have a conscience at all you can bring it back to BMC. Just lay it out, in the public waiting room. The staff will know who it belongs to.
Ron and Marlys Howard
Parents of Danny Howard
Merrifield
Thoughts on war and freedom
Here's a quotation from John Mills (1806-1873) that people should consider when they are thinking about war and freedom:
"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The man who has nothing to for which he is willing to fight and nothing he cares more about than his personal safety is a miserable creature who has not chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."
George Brancato
Pillager
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