2006
Same-Sex Swan Song a Sour Serenade
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by Robert E. Meyer
We had a Marriage Amendment referendum in Wisconsin this November, as they did in several other states. I have to admit that for a while I was pretty concerned that the outcome of the vote was in doubt.
Last spring, I was having breakfast with a man who has been very influential in my life over the past several years. I complained to him about the indifference and complacency that I noticed on the marriage issue. At that time, I saw Letters to the Editor every week arguing for voting "no" on the amendment referendum. I saw very few rebuttals. It would be more than generous to say the arguments against the amendment were very specious, but they were cleverly presented to appeal to the emotions, and dupe anyone who was not doing their own independent research.
In Wisconsin, as well as seven of the eight states with binding referendums on marriage, the amendments passed, taking the question of the legal composition of marriage out of the hands of judges.
After the vote, editorial sections of regional newspapers I read, were teeming with sour-grape diatribes by those who had voted against the Marriage Amendment. They spent their editorial capital either ridiculing the ethic, or trying to shame the "backward majority" who had voted for the amendment.
One such letter was composed by a man in his late twenties, who took a futuristic approach in his effort to scold "narrow-minded" readers.
He imagined that it was the year 2056, and that he was an incontinent senior citizen, who was trying to get someone to change his soiled diaper. He reminded the current generation alive then, that though the state of Wisconsin had passed an amendment legally sanctioning only traditional marriage, he was one of the "enlightened" progressives who didn't vote with the rest of the ignorant yokels.
I responded to him in my own Letter to the Editor as such…
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