To the editor:
Stuart Diamond's letter on gay marriage (the Times, Friday, June 8) is, to me, disgraceful.
Least of its offenses, it parrots the right wing hackery's questions about Barack Obama's Christianity and asserts that he's only chasing money from the American Gomorrah known as Hollywood.
Those show business types must be the 1 or 2 percent of Americans that Mr. Diamond thinks oppose gay marriage. In fact, polling now consistently shows that a strong majority of Americans do favor gay marriage, and that this trend will certainly intensify into the future.
Worst of all, Mr. Diamond's language is laced with words like diabolical, perverse, immorality, and moral filth — words he uses to describe people that all of us know among family and friends. He claims that gay rights activists succeed by "intimidation and name calling," while attempting to do so himself, perhaps unaware that name calling and intimidation are precisely what gay people themselves have endured for years.
"Conservatives" claim to know what was in people's minds hundreds or thousands of years ago, and claim obedience to documents written by mortal men, i.e., the Constitution and the Bible.
The founding fathers probably did disapprove of homosexuality, being of their time, but they did not see fit to mention it in writing (as they did when denying slaves their rights).
They were very clear, however, on the generalized ideal of equal rights for all. This seems elemental as it applies to gay people, whom most people these days do not think are morally degenerate sinners.
My own opinion is that Jesus of Nazareth, the first and greatest of "community organizers," would agree. He stood up for the poorest and weakest of society and very clearly asked us to do the same.
How about it, Stuart?
MIKE DYER
Essex
