Today's Indianapolis Star has a letter to the editor from the President and Executive Director of the American Values Alliance.

Statehouse leaders are exploiting civil-union issue

The American Values Alliance is a nonpartisan group of Hoosier citizens who seek to restore civility to political discourse and who believe that public policy should be based on facts and reason. We are disappointed that, because of a recent court decision in New Jersey, The Star chose to run a front-page story with a banner headline announcing the "return" of gay marriage as a "timely issue" in the upcoming election.

The proposed Indiana constitutional amendment, which benefits no one, would ban civil unions between committed, loving couples solely because they are of the same gender, thus enshrining discrimination in our Constitution.

Indiana voters face many important choices regarding education, health care, privatization of public resources and a declining standard of living. It is frustrating to see the speaker of the House and the House minority leader jockeying to exploit this issue in a manner calculated to achieve political advantage by pandering to the fears and prejudices of some of their constituents.

Their remarks, and the Star's headline, add to the atmosphere of distrust in which a sitting congressman can ply the politics of exclusion and prejudice by charging that his opponent is "not one of us" because he opposes a similar federal constitutional amendment.

The right to choose one's life partner is a matter of fundamental fairness. This proposed amendment would deprive a minority of our citizens of the benefits available to married heterosexual couples. When political leaders spend their time and energy on this sort of wedge issue, they not only distract citizens from those politicians' own mismanagement and neglect of substantive issues, they contribute to the culture of intolerance.

William Groth
President
Arthur Farnsley
Executive Director
American Values Alliance

login or register to post comments