Federal Marriage Amendment – a letter to Mr Bush

Here’s a copy of a letter I sent off to President Bush today:

Dear President Bush,

The American national anthem speaks of the USA as being “the land of the free”. It disturbs me then to read about a proposed Federal Marriage Amendment which states:

Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this constitution or the constitution of any state, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups.

This Amendment, if passed, would not only deny same-sex couples the right to marry legally, but also prevent them from being entitled to the same benefits as heterosexual couples.

Marriage is not denied to murderers, child molesters, thieves, or arsonists, yet law-abiding people in a relationship with someone of the same sex are, seemingly, not free, and their love for their partner is not as good as the love of heterosexual couples. It seems that the US Supreme Court was wrong to state that the freedom to marry “has long been recognised as one of the vital personal rights to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.”

If this Amendment is passed it would write discrimination against gay citizens into the very Constitution; it would effectively state that gay people are not fully citizens; that their loves are anathema to the meaning of America itself; that they do not fully belong there and can live there only as second-class citizens; and that their relationships are relegated to the marginal and despised.

The Federal Marriage Amendment is not the work of a free, right-thinking, or just society. There for I ask you to do all in your power to ensure that people who are gay have the same rights and benefits as heterosexual people, and enjoy the same dignity.