To the Editor:
The guys would look at Playboy magazine. It seemed at the time that Hugh Hefner set the standard, the ideal, of what every normal man wanted women to represent. I always objected to this on the grounds that love should be accepted in any bodily form or color.
It’s true that you don’t choose who you will be attracted to or fall in love with. Also that, looking reality full in the face, it must apply for some people the facts that just as a woman can be attracted to and fall in love with a man for having certain qualities, a man might also, and a woman might fall for another woman for the same reason, to the same degree of commitments.
While traveling through Massachusetts, my wife and I sat across a cafeteria alone except for two men across from us peacefully holding a conversation. As they passed by us, my wife noticed they were wearing wedding rings. My immediate thought was “big deal.” Is this what all the fuss is about?
Yet I am aware that such men have been, are still being, beaten and killed, that religion’s histories and fears have created paranoia and emotional bonfires against them, that their struggles for civil rights alone were and still are denied by the same forces that denied civil rights to Afro-Americans and women.
There are those opposing gay marriage on the grounds that marriage is “holy,” though holy is a religious word, and most marriages aren’t religious or honored religiously, either. There are marriages in cultures where “holy” represents commitment, tender and caring love, as I have observed while watching TV documentaries of nomadic tribes of nuclear families. Truly beautiful, peaceful, mutually respectful; something we can all learn from.
As to what so many call immoral relationships, though loving ones, there are same-sex relationships that have lasted longer than heterosexual marriages.
There are many things in life I don’t really understand, but which have been proven to be undeniably true, and I don’t believe it’s right or just to force people to behave contrary to their own nature, as long as their nature harms no one and/or enhances their lives and that of others.
Neither is it right nor just for the Hugh Hefners or others on the other end of the normal spectrum to dictate what form love comes too us and our rights to choose and be legally recognized, benefits equal for all. We are all of us, human beings, and it’s time again to lighten up, loosen up, and watch what happens. Guaranteed – we always benefit and become more tolerant when we do so.
Carl Scheiman, Walpole
