To the editor:

Journal-World letter-writers who attack gay marriage on religious grounds keep denying they are bigots or homophobes. I can’t read their individual souls, but there are significant absences in the rhetoric of their movement as a whole. I haven’t heard persuasive explanations of:

1. Exactly how it affects the sanctity of a marriage in their religion, if someone else somewhere else uses the word “marriage” or gets the same tax breaks they get. Why this overreaching into other people’s lives?

2. Why the government should enforce on everybody the rules of one particular religion. Why this overbearing desire to control other people?

3. Why they focus so compulsively on sexual expression. Why withhold marriage rights from gays (whose private behavior affects no one), while granting rights to wife beaters, murderers, and even Democrats?

Now I do know their response. They think all morality comes from religion, so law must enforce a religion. That opinion violates fact, common sense and the American Constitution. In fact, most people have met some perfectly moral atheists. In common sense, there are compelling nonreligious reasons to be a good person — e.g. good people tend to be happier. In the Constitution, we are prohibited from using the government to establish religious beliefs.

When a movement covers its gaping silences with glaring mistruths, one suspects dark motives. “Bigotry” accurately describes their support for discrimination against gays. “Homophobia” accurately describes their fear of the effect of gay marriages on their own marriages.

David Burress,

Lawrence