NOM BLOG

Maryland Schoolteacher on Why He's Voting No on Question 6

 

Eric Lee writes to the Baltimore Sun that opposing gay marriage is not about hate:

"Now, imagine if I went into my favorite vegetarian restaurant tomorrow and found out that there was a movement under way to start selling hamburgers there, while still calling the restaurant vegetarian. I go up to the manager and protest: "Hamburgers are not a vegetarian food — they're meat! How can you serve this in a vegetarian restaurant?" He replies: "I am redefining what it means to be a vegetarian." To which I would respond, emphatically: "But being a vegetarian is something special, something different from being someone who eats meat. It's been this way ever since the term vegetarian was invented! If you want to serve hamburgers, then you can do it, but you're not a vegetarian restaurant anymore." Says he: "I don't care about what you think vegetarianism is, or what anyone else throughout history thinks; I am redefining it because I want to, for my own reasons. Vegetarians should stop discriminating and accept meat eaters as being vegetarian too. I think you should stop hating meat eaters and let them have the equal right of being vegetarian — after all, what makes you so special?"
...What I and other traditional marriage supporters are standing for is the uniqueness and goodness that by nature manifest themselves only in a marriage between a man and a woman.

So if you see this vegetarian driving his hybrid car with a little bumper sticker supporting traditional marriage, please know that I do not hate you, even if you are planning on voting the opposite way from me on Question 6. I hope you will return the "no hate" favor to me as well. I am also asking, before you cast your vote, that you please try to understand how those opposed to redefining marriage think. Please understand that we are very much hoping to keep the definition of marriage as the beautiful institution it is now in my family, the way it was for me growing up, and the way it has been from time immemorial as the basis of human society.

This is why I am going to vote against Question 6 — in order to uphold and support marriage as an exclusive, loving relationship between one man and one woman."

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