To the editor:

After reading some of the letters in the Public Forum about the upcoming vote on placing existing Kansas law into the Kansas Constitution, I am amazed at some of the reader reactions, especially those who identify voting for keeping the definition of marriage intact as being hateful and imposing their will on others. In fact, marriage has been the union of one man and one woman for thousands of years. Even cultures who did not believe in the God of the Bible promoted and upheld it because they knew that marriage is the building block of a stable society.

Those advocating against the definition of marriage being in the Kansas Constitution do not seem to understand that if you allow other definitions of marriage to exist and proliferate, the definition of what marriage is will be diluted. Counterfeit models of “marriage” will inevitably result in a decline in those getting married because it no longer means anything.

People need to consider the long-term effects of failing to protect marriage. What will happen in family courts when children are the innocent bystanders in battles with several combinations of “parenting partners”?

Everyone has the right to marry; it is an individual right, not a couple’s right. We need to think this through clearly before we thrust a social experiment upon our children by failing to protect the very institution that protects them.

Judy Smith,

Leawood