Dear Editor,
I was very interested to read about Ali Shams’ proposed compromise on gay marriage in the Jan. 29 article titled ‘UCSD Senior Pioneers Domestic-Partnership Initiative.’ However, I do not believe the compromise fully addresses the discrimination felt by the LGBT community when their relationships are denied the validity of marriage.
‘ U.S. citizens are guaranteed freedom of religion but not to the extent of infringing on others’ political rights. Imagine if the federal government had told the suffragettes of the 1920s that women would be granted the right to vote in local and state, but not national, elections because if they were given too many rights the misogynists would be offended.’
‘ Shams’s compromise implies that as long as gay couples enjoy the same legal rights as heterosexual couples it doesn’t matter if their unions are called ‘marriage.’ However, creating the separate category of ‘domestic partnership’ for same-sex couples implies that they are so different from the rest of us they can’t possibly merit equal treatment. The message of Brown v. Board of Education is as applicable today as it was in 1954: Separate is never equal.