To the Editor:

Why did Congressman Lightfoot vote to kill the District of Columbia domestic partnership ordinance? Lightfoot signed a nondiscrimination pledge for his office a year ago; I thought he would be above this kind of bigotry.

The elected government passed this ordinance, and no one outside the district should be meddling. The measure spends zero federal funds.

Repeal voters claimed that the measure “undermines the family” by placing live-in lovers on a par with married couples. This is a lie. Divorce rates aren’t any higher in cities that have these laws already. Domestic partner registration requires all sorts of proof of commitment. This repeal really says to gays and lesbians that promiscuity is on a par with a monogamous long term relationship.

Domestic partnerships often have nothing to do with sexual relationships, anyway. They also benefit elderly people, often widowed who live in the same household.

The AARP and Gray Panthers endorsed such a proposed law in California recently for that reason. It allows partners to visit each other when one is in the emergency room, possibly dying.

This move was sponsored by Indiana Congressman Hostettler, the former Quayle aide who called Jews “the people who killed Christ” at a public forum last year, and made Mother Jones magazine’s “Ten Dimmest Bulbs in Congress” list this year.

More and more companies are enacting partnership laws. It is time for the “probusiness” GOP Congress to get with the program.

As former Senator Goldwater has said, the government needs to get not only out of our pocketbooks but out of our bedrooms as well. This repeal flies in the face of that truth.

William A. Pritchard

Overland Park, Kan.