One of the reasons our country is great is because of laws regarding equal rights of citizens and the government’s responsibility to uphold those rights.

Along with the condition that the government is separate from all religious affiliations, these policies have allowed us to become a free and democratic nation. Today, President Bush is fighting to crumble the foundations our nation was built on and its progression, such as civil and women’s rights, by aiming to amend the Constitution to ban the marriage of homosexuals.

The fundamental flaw in his argument is that to deny homosexuals the right to marriage would be to legally discriminate against a class of people defined by an inherent and unchangeable trait.

There are several reasons the opposition feels the need to restrict these people’s rights. The first is they feel it will destroy the idea of marriage.

If the “objective” of marriage is not just to procreate (for then we would be no different than animals) but to sustain a loving and meaningful relationship, then homosexuals are just as capable of having a legitimate marriage as heterosexuals.

Additionally, there are many sterile couples who cannot have children of their own, like homosexual couples. If these sterile couples are able to have “legitimate” marriages because of the healthy and loving bond they share, then why not homosexuals as well?

The opposition also claims gay marriage would lead to an increased number of adoptions, that gays are bad parents for lack of mother and father figures, and, heaven forbid, the children would be “influenced to be gay.”

Published studies conclude that there are no developmental differences between children of heterosexual and homosexual parents.

In fact, many professional associations — including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychoanalytic Association and the American Psychological Association — have issued formal statements supporting parenting and adoption for homosexuals. Numerous studies show that children are not “raised to be gay.”

In 1995, J. Bailey and his colleagues studied “adult sons of gay fathers and found more than 90 percent of the sons to be heterosexual.” This is due to the fact that being gay is not a choice, but rather a innate trait. In a previous study done by Bailey and colleagues in 1991, 52 percent of cases of identical twins of which one was gay, the other was gay as well, while only 9.2 percent of brothers studied showed that if one was gay, the other was as well.

The bottom line is said best by the American Psychological Association — “human beings can not choose to be either gay or straight.”

What it finally boils down to is religion. Many religions’ stances on the topic are that homosexuality is inherently wrong. I respect that opinion and feel it is an important one, given our nation’s belief in religious freedom.

The problem with an amendment to the Constitution is that people wish to push their personal religious beliefs through secular national law. The Constitution and several Supreme Court cases specifically discuss this issue and have clearly laid out a separation of church and state. The government can’t pass religion-based laws, period.

The real moral decision here is that we, as a nation, are discussing systematically selecting a group of people who are different from the majority and actively choosing to deny them basic rights because of their innate differences.

This has occurred a few times before in our history, most prominently when determining the legality of slavery and women’s suffrage. After the efforts of Martin Luther King Jr. and Susan B. Anthony, who fought for equal rights for all citizens, I find it hard to believe that we have a president who is trying to amend the Constitution to legally discriminate against a distinct group of people.

Jeff Rothblum is a sophomore in aerospace engineering from Buffalo Grove, Ill. He is a member of the ISU Democrats.