Will Penman’s Monday column on same-sex marriage was a peculiar addition to an Alligator issue that included articles on the Dove World Outreach Center, gay adoption in Utah and commemorations of the civil rights movement. Although self-labeled as a man who “can’t figure out what to think about gay marriage,” his mocking ramblings about “not hearing much from the cousin-marriage people,” which also snipe that “it’s very impolite at UF to oppose gay marriage, you know,” show a trivializing ignorance toward the struggle of homosexuals to gain acceptance in contemporary society. Our Student Body’s support of LGBTQ students should not be mocked but cherished in a world where some nations put those convicted of homosexuality to death.
As he asks, I wish Penman luck making his decision, which he could probably sit and think about over Martin Luther King holida weekend. During King’s life there were many who saw different-race marriage as an attack on a holy institution defined for centuries as between members of the same race. There were also those who kept an open mind but worried that the nation was rushing into something before it had really thought it through.
If alive then, Penman might have been distracted by a 1950 map showing the 16 states where two persons of different colors could not legally wed (that would have made same-sex marriage 680 percent more distasteful than same-race marriage.) What he would then fail to see are the persons on the map who struggle for civil equality and the basic recognition of their own humanity as an equal part of human cultural and biological diversity. Support for same-sex marriage is not found in Internet maps but in the human conscience. In a time when fewer heterosexuals are committing to marriage, support for any two people who desire to back their love with legal commitment should be pouring in from Christians, cousins and chart-enthusiasts alike.
