I would like to respond to the editorial board’s opinion article on “Gay Rights.”

I would like the editorial board to know Iowans in most instances could care less about the current trend in California.

Californians have had a history of regulating anything they can get their paws on, be it gay rights or smoking in bars.

Iowans to a very large extent consider themselves independent of West Coast political tides.

As for myself and many other “traditional and close minded” Iowans, we believe homosexuals are entitled to all rights granted to any other American through the Constitution.

Gays have rights to housing and freedom from tyranny just as I do.

My major complaint is born not out of fundamental rights, such as those California has helped guarantee but instead status rights, e.g., the right to marriage.

Marriage is defined as “the institution whereby men and women are joined in a special kind of social and legal dependence for the purpose of founding and maintaining a family (Websters Dictionary, 1999).”

Where does man and man or woman and woman come into play here?

The presence of “love” as you call it does not define a marriage.

It is a legal status created when a man and a woman become a family entity before the state.

I’m sorry, but both society and our legal system have never defined marriage in homosexual terms.

Homosexual “bonds” are bonds distinct from marriage.

The state of California isn’t taking a step back. Instead they are obeying the precedent set before them by our own society.

The editorial board might say “this just isn’t fair!”

Well, when has the state been fair?

The government operates to the extent of the law laid before it.

If the government swayed with liberal winds like the editorial board does, it would spend most of the time rewriting laws instead of writing new laws.

I know no liberal would want that to happen.

Maybe the editorial board should argue philosophical questions and not policy questions.

That way I can’t blame them for their leftist views.

It seems they might be a little out of touch with Americans and certainly Iowans in this case.

They are more liberal on this issue than both California AND the Clinton administration.

It’s unfortunate they can’t ever have the opinion of a closed-minded, traditional Iowan like me.

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Michael Vander Molen

Junior

Chemical engineering