To the editor:

I have been meaning to write this letter for a long time. Growing up, one of the greatest lessons my parents taught me was tolerance. We were not a religious family in the traditional sense, but my sister and I were taught that human beings should love one another and not judge others. Unfortunately, I find this is not true with many people.

I have sat by the sidelines, silent, for far too long. I am referring to attempts to deny a segment of our society the rights that others of us enjoy – the right to love whom you want to love openly and to enter into a legal relationship that accords you the rights as a partner that heterosexual, legally married people enjoy. How can it possibly hurt Mary and Joe if Mary and Sarah are a couple enjoying the same rights?

People do not choose their sexual orientation. It is biological. Doesn’t it say in the Bible that people should not pass judgment on others? I did not choose to be heterosexual. I have gay friends whom I love as much as my heterosexual friends. I would never judge them. I wish dearly they had the same rights as I. It hurts me that they do not. It also hurts me that judgmental people want to, or can vote to, deny them the rights that they themselves enjoy. It alarms me that this could be possible in a democracy.

Kathy Schott Gates,

Lawrence