To the cabinet members of the LGBTAA: In your Sept. 24 letter, you stated that “discrimination is tolerated in few ways in our society.”

Actually, discrimination can be useful. We are allowed to discriminate against sex offenders, for example. We discriminate because we have the right to — sex offenders have done something that they don’t have the right to do. (We don’t discriminate arbitrarily and then justify it, as you mentioned in your article.)

But you, the LGBTAA, not only want to say that you have the right to live out your homosexuality, you want to say that the government should support you in your endeavor. So now the burden of proof is on you to explain why the same benefits that are given to married couples should be given to you, who want to have sex with another person in a way that will never in any way benefit our society.

You may argue that same-sex couples can adopt, but so can a single person. You may argue that a male/female couple is allowed to marry even though the female is barren or the male is impotent, but this should be allowed. A sink that does not give out water is still called a sink; it was made for that reason but it just doesn’t work. (In this analogy, the sink is a marriage and water is children.) I can’t buy a towel rack and call it a sink; it wasn’t made to give out water, and it never can.

Sure, people were made with a lot of desires, and a lot of these desires are not good ones: the desire to take revenge, cheat, steal, kill and have sex in improper ways — with children, for example.Appealing to a natural desire will not help you; you need to show two things: 1) why acting in a homosexual manner is proper and right and 2) why the government should give you benefits for doing this. (The government doesn’t give benefits to everyone who does what they have the right to do.)

Note that in my article, I made no reference to God or the Bible. I’ve offered reasons, not cheap shots or name-calling. You may call me intolerant or closed-minded or discriminatory, but what matters is my argument. What I have said is not only my personal beliefs; what I have said would be true even if I didn’t believe it. If you believe otherwise, then offer reasons.

So far, I’ve offered reasons why civil unions should not be allowed among same-sex couples. Civil unions give same-sex couples benefits that they do not deserve.

Chris Tweedt

Senior

Philosophy