Leave marriage to the churches
I disagree with Mr. Weiss’s opinion [“Gay marriage bans wrong,” Nov. 14] regarding the success of California’s Proposition 8 and other measures similar to it.
As a devout Catholic, Marriage is one of seven holy sacraments bestowed upon members of the church. The same way I will fight to prevent zealots from stealing consecrated hosts from the church so that they may defile the body of Christ, I will fight to prevent the LGBT community from defiling the sacrament of Marriage.
It is inappropriate for the LGBT community to force a re-definition of something I consider to be a sacrament through legislative means. Such actions threaten the very existence of my church and its legal status in the U.S.
Furthermore, no state should have its nose in the business of marriage. To states, getting married entails, among others things, registering and getting a license.
The real purpose behind the states licensing marriage is so that they may make a profit off the activity. Every year they collect thousands in the fees paid to get these licenses. In addition, when it comes time for tax season, a married couple must pay significantly higher taxes when compared to two individuals who file independently.
There currently exists legislation to give all the same legal rights to a same-sex couple with regards to tax status, power of attorney and custody of minors. The LGBT community needs to band together with the Catholic community to demand that the states get out of the “business” of marriage and leave it to the churches instead of forcing Catholics to redefine their beliefs through legislative actions. This is the compromise both communities need to be working towards.
Mark Hopke
ME graduate student
Tech needs to enforce Free Speech Area
Earlier [last] week, the Genocide Awareness Project (GAP) featured a display on Skiles Walkway of 24 large-scale images of aborted fetuses juxtaposed with genocide.
This is not the GAP’s first visit to Tech, and with each visit, I’ve found their presence on Skiles inappropriate and disruptive to the campus’ educational environment and to the health and well-being of its student population. All future visits the GAP should be confined to the Free Speech Area, the Centennial Amphitheater next to the Ferst Center for the Arts.
I’m not opposing the presence of the GAP on political grounds. My objection is to the organization’s location, tactics and visual materials. The GAP’s presence on Skiles is at the heart of the campus’ main thoroughfare, making them almost impossible to avoid and thus serving as an unwanted distraction from students’ academic objectives.
All students in any public university have the right to walk to class and move about campus without interference, distraction or coercion from outside political forces. For this reason, any protest group that is not part of a Tech student organization is supposed to be restricted to the Free Speech Area, which provides a forum for these groups to exercise their First Amendment rights while still preserving the peaceful integrity of Tech’s learning environment.
In addition, the nature of the material that the GAP displays is high inflammatory, used for obvious shock value. The GAP’s materials are of a derogatory nature to many female students and students of Jewish descent, as they compare aborted fetuses to Holocaust victims and women who have abortions to Nazi war criminals and terrorists.
I hope that Tech will take action and restrict the GAP to the Free Speech Area during all future visits. The GAP’s actions are a violation of both Tech’s space reservation policy and its responsibility to its students, and therefore, they should not be tolerated by this Institute.
Joshua Cuneo
DM graduate student