To the editor:

The marriage amendment being put before voters in the April election does not only define marriage, it also limits to married partners the rights and privileges of marriage.

It will be harder for people to get health care, harder for sick and even dying people to be cared for by their loved ones, harder for children to be raised by surviving parents.

Over 24 years ago our first child died of meningitis before his adoption was legally completed. I know first-hand what it is like to be barred from the hospital room of someone you love. We were lucky to have a social worker intervene for us. Without that intervention, our baby’s last days would have been spent among strangers.

The gratuitous cruelty of the second clause of this amendment would institutionalize a broad class of situations like this as a matter of course, and institutionalize it within the Kansas Constitution.

Please do not support this.

Judy Roitman,

Lawrence