Gay Rights: Still a Debate?

I was dismayed to see "Gay Rights to be Debated" on the front page of the UW student newspaper. Somehow I think we should be beyond that. It is 2002 after all. The GBLTC on campus thought the same way and didn't support the debate. GBLTC director Malena Pinkham said, "We decided not to endorse the debate because it legitimizes gay rights, and they shouldn't have to be legitimized."

The debate was organized by the student senate vice chair, a sophomore in political science. His goal was to find out what different political ideologies think about gay rights.

To make things interesting, or maybe to try to illicit the same tired arguments, the Washington State Christian Coalition was invited to present the conservative opinion along with a local radio station commentator to present the 'liberal' opinion and Dr. Nigel Ashford of George Mason University to present the libertarian. Only the religious right opinion was quoted in the paper along with comments from two students, one who said that she was "pleased to hear different ideologies on the same stage peacefully discussing issues."

I hesitate to include the Christian Coalition's rantings, but it is still out there and though we've heard it all before, it always takes on a new absurdity for me. The speaker started out by saying that gays should not be allowed to marry out of respect for heterosexual couples. "Where does a society draw the line?" he asked, adding that if two gay men are allowed to marry, nothing is stopping three gay men, or a father and his daughter, or a mother and her son to do so. Imagine. Legalized Menage a trois, Electra and Oedipal relationships running rampant. This is what they fear. Thankfully, bestiality and the usual addictive/alcoholic analogies were left out this time.