Hate isn’t debate

Letters to the Editor

By: Letters to the Editor

To the editor:

In his Super Tuesday column of May 25, 2015, Wyatt Smitherman describes the “pure diamond of normal marriage–marriage between a man and a woman, created for the right reasons.” He compares it to the “flawed stone” of “hybrid” partnerships (that is, same-sex partnerships), which, he says, “create caricatures of families based on conditional love and confused desires.”

I was surprised to find, in the pages of a respected and influential publication at my very own place of work, the notion that my queer family is a “caricature” of a family–and couched in the metaphors of purity vs. contamination so beloved by eugenics, no less.

This is not argument, but aggression, for which ignorance isn’t much of an excuse. It’s a shame that The Daily chose to enshrine it under the heading of serious debate.

Nina Schloesser Tárano

Lecturer, Creative Writing Program, English Department

Contact Nina Schloesser Tárano at nst ‘at’ stanford.edu

A Student

It is not hate, and is indeed a debate that is worth having since this deals with issues of faith as well as sexual preference. The question needs to be asked and answered as to where the lines end, for you the issue of marriage may be one of the right to love, or your individual sexual preference. For me the issue of marriage is inseparable from my faith, and it is incompatible with any other type of partnership other than the ones described in the article. So we need to have a conversation, and it is not hate to hold to your religious values any more than it is hate for someone to say those values are useless and valueless.

I will never accept that marriage applies to anything other than a traditional man woman partnership with the hope of raising kids. At the same times, we live in a free society where an individual is free to choose how to live their own life. So, am I opposed to civil partnerships, no… do i object to gay adoptions, yes, but only because i feel like men and women both offer different things and that diversity in that sense is important to kids…so my thought there would be that man/woman partnerships should get preference over same sex and single parent adoptions.. but not that they should be forbidden, but i could be wrong.

So I am willing to talk, and I am willing to discuss… but I am not willing to be told that my views are hate, or that I need to change… and the more that the pro-gay rights side advocates this all or nothing approach and is unable to talk or discuss with out labeling all who disagree as hateful then the polarization will increase… and while for the most part the discourse has be somewhat civil… it will become less, and less civil, with minorities in both side becoming more extreme.
JVW

A lecturer in creative writing fails to understand metaphor and chalks it up to hate speech. That is the perfect example of the kind of nonsense coming from university campuses these days.
tired

Here we go again .. hate, aggression, ignorance .. just throw those words around and also claim you want to have a debate. Is there any viewpoint that runs counter to what you are doing that you think are worthy of debate?