To the editor:

Some fundamentalists/evangelicals claim that civil marriage of gays and lesbians threatens their (the fundamentalists’) bonds of matrimony. Marriages are under great stress in this society. Denying rights to gays and lesbians (Journal-World, Dec. 5) won’t help the fundamentalists in their marriages.

A Christian market-research group, Barna Group, finds divorce among born-again Christians is 35 percent — the same as for the population as a whole. Among Protestants, Pentecostals have the highest rate, 44 percent, while Presbyterians have the lowest, 28 percent. Gays and lesbians have nothing to do with those rates.

Probably ignorance and misinformation about developing a close and caring sexual relationship with one’s partner (either heterosexual or homosexual) has more to do with a marriage/partnership breaking up. Many of us, fundamentalists included, could benefit from exposure to something like Dennis Dailey’s sexuality class! Admonitions of shame and sin aren’t the best (they may be the worst) preparation for a close, caring marriage relationship!

Secondarily, economics and low family income may affect some marriages, although in loving families it probably brings them closer in mutual efforts to survive economically. Trickle-down economics often has resulted in both partners going to work, at times shortchanging their children. Teenage pregnancies are most likely when the girl experienced poverty as a child, or was sexually abused.

There are problems in this country, reflected in dysfunctional marriages and teenage pregnancy. Denial of gay and lesbian love and marriage won’t solve those problems. The Legislature needs to look for real solutions.

Mark Larson,

Lawrence