To the editor:

“It is difficult to fight for freedom. But I also know how difficult it can be to bend long years of habit and custom to grant it. There is no room for injustice anywhere in the American mansion. But there is always room for understanding those who see the old ways crumbling. And to them today I say simply this: It must come. It is right that it should come. And when it has, you will find that a burden has been lifted from your shoulders, too. It is not just a question of guilt, although there is that. It is that men cannot live with a lie and not be stained by it.”

President Johnson spoke these words to the thousands who opposed the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Can you imagine our country today without voting rights for all people regardless of color?

Before 1965, many people weren’t allowed to vote in parts of our country and suffered segregation, humiliation, violence and limits on other rights because they were not white. Skin color is not a choice or a preference; it just is, and sexual orientation is no more a “preference” than is the color of one’s skin. This is the lie that supports the effort to write discrimination against homosexuals into our state constitution.

I urge Kansans to do the right thing and stand for fairness and equity for all people, even those who are different.

Barbara Duke,

Lawrence