Letters to the Editor

The State Journal Register

Dear Editor:

Thanks to cartoonist Chris Britt and your editorial writers for portraying the Illinois Family Institute as fostering an environment of "hate" across the state. We know you hit a nerve because of the howls of bias coming from the wounded bigots. These are the people who claim vast majority support, yet who call themselves "persecuted Christians."

If the haters are really concerned about "saving" marriage, why aren't they pressuring legislators to outlaw divorce rather than to prohibit an expansion of equality in marriage? What the IFI really wants to defend is the "right" to hate, the right to discriminate. Voters filled with fear and apprehension about "terrorists" from within and without, are handed the soothing solution of scapegoats: blame gays, immigrants, Muslims, abortionists.

It ought to be a truism of democracy in America or anywhere else that the rights of citizens, including the aspirations of struggling minorities, ought not be put to a vote, placed at risk to majority whim. Large majorities of Americans were at one time opposed to Irish equality and to interracial marriage. Struggle by the Irish, by African Americans --sometimes with "activist judges" joining in-- gradually bent public opinion toward equality.

Joined by our allies, gays advocating for ourselves have led many folk to believe in our equality because they see us as fellow human beings rather than the denizens of hell described by some religious and political hate mongers.

BOB SCHWARTZ

Gay Liberation Network, Chicago