GAY MARRIAGE IS NOT A MENACE

T

he gay marriage debate arouses a cont rover s y i n whic h personal values of people who want to impose their morals on others are intermingled with those of people who want to be accepted as they are in order to live a normal life, free of rumors, mocking and hatred. This is a free, diverse nation, and one of the foundations on which it was built is tolerance.

This is the nature of the gay mar r iage di sc ussion, which today has its second round of hearings in the Supreme Court. The decision of a federal Circuit Court of Appeals to uphold laws prohibiting gay marriage in Kentucky, Michigan, Tennessee and Ohio has brought back t he i s sue to t he Supreme Court, which must decide whether those laws are unconstitutional and if all states must recognize marriages performed in other states.

Those are the questions both sides must contend with so the magistrates decide. Unfortunately, outside the tribunal and around the country this discussion has taken on a religious fervor, in seek of absolute truths. Thus, acting differently and defending this freedom of action is dubbed an attack on religious freedom, distorting the discussion.

Much nonsense has been spouted during this conversation. Some people believe, like former congresswoman Michele Bachmann, that gay marriage - along with Oba- ma’s government- is going to bring the apocalypse closer. This is a risible pronouncement, but many people see their faith threatened when not everybody agrees with them.

This is a problem because our nation’s freedom of religion is about diversit y of creed, not the uniform imposition of one of t hem in particular, with its permits and prohibitions.

It’s saddening that part of the Republican political discourse today feeds this false idea of a cornered religion, and that gay marriage is the detonator of this feeling. We hope the High Tribunal will do the right thing as it already did once, and will respect both individual religious principles and the desire of those who want to live their life without bothering others... ! troubling, it’s their own per

life.. sonal problem for meddling in somebody else’s