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December 05, 2005
One step back
On Friday, I started to write a blog entry about the report released the previous day by New Hampshire’s same-sex marriage commission. I was so angry I had to say something. Yet I knew from experience that I had to get past the anger to say what I wanted to say.
Then, halfway through the blog entry, I decided I wasn’t really writing a blog at all. I was writing the editorial for the Sunday Monitor. I went back and edited out all the “I thinks,” which were really scaffolding anyway, and assumed the mantle of the editorial “we.” (I don’t like the first person in an editorial, so I generally avoid the “we” whenever I can.)
So what’s the difference between a blog entry and an editorial?
I’m still an amateur blogger – who isn’t, with the exception of my friend Chad Finn, the Boston sports blogger? – but I have a few answers.
For me, blogging is fast writing. Although I don’t always make it, my goal when I write a blog entry is to stay under 400 words. A blog entry can be more personal than an editorial. I polish editorials, and at least one other editor reads them before they go in the paper. For better or worse, the blog is just me thinking out loud.
That doesn’t mean I don’t also think about how I say things in the blog. Words are my life. I try to treat them right, even though they don’t always treat me right.
Finally, in the case of the same-sex marriage commission, I knew in my bones after 20-plus years of editorial writing that this stance was important for the Monitor to take.
A few years ago, I read and admired the work of David Moats of the Rutland Herald, who won the Pulitzer Prize for a series of editorials that helped Vermont find a path to gay civil unions. Out of fairness and in justice, New Hampshire needs to find a similar path.
Here’s the editorial, which ran under the headline, “New Hampshire is far better than this bigotry”:
It would be easy to go bonkers over the embarrassing report issued Thursday by New Hampshire’s same-sex marriage commission. In some ways, though, it is a relief to have this commission end. Here’s what should happen now: The governor should openly denounce this report, and the Legislature should repudiate it.
The report is prejudice codified. It is hard to believe that in the 21st century, such flaunting of bigotry is tolerated in the public halls. It is hard to believe that citizens who know better would not rise up in protest against their representatives inviting and expressing such loathsome claptrap.
Can you imagine a commission on women or on African-Americans producing a report like this? Its members would be tarred and feathered. At least they would be shut up. But gay men and lesbians are a small and only partly visible minority. Somehow, this makes it all right to allow bigots to rail away at them in public testimony and an official commission to take these bigoted assertions seriously.
The truth is, New Hampshire is a tolerant state. Yes, polls show that the public opposes gay marriage. But in part that is because public debate on this issue has not advanced beyond blind prejudice. It is painful to acknowledge that, but the commission’s work makes it crystal clear.
How many times have you heard it asserted – with no evidence whatsoever – that the real agenda of gay men and lesbians is to destroy the institution of marriage? The commission even says so in its report!
What gay men and lesbians want is the same thing straight couples already have: the right to commit officially and publicly to lasting, loving personal relationships, and the benefits that go with state-sanctioned marriage. It is not much to ask.
What they got instead from this commission was a self-fulfilling prophecy from people who began their inquiry with neither open minds nor humanistic intentions. The report asserts that “same-sex relationships are not based on the same concepts of stability and fidelity as marriage.” And this: “Gays tend to be measurably more promiscuous than their straight counterparts.”
These statements rise from bias. Coming from an official commission, they perpetuate bias.
New Hampshire is far better than what the representatives of the people have produced in this offensive report. New Hampshire is a place where most people take “Live Free or Die” to mean “Live and Let Live.”
If the gay-marriage report’s recommendations come to a vote, individual conscience will play a far greater role in the result than political log-rolling or partisan ideology. Even with an average age just south of Methuselah, the Legislature will reject the ideas put forth in this report.
The report is an aberration, part of the inevitable hangover from the one-term governorship of Craig Benson. That is why Gov. John Lynch should go out of his way to denounce it.
Lynch is politically cautious and has come out against gay marriage. But he owes it to New Hampshire’s citizenry to counter the public embarrassment that this report represents.
It isn’t the governor alone who should let his voice be heard. Other legislators and citizens, especially those who are not gay, must speak out as well.
New Hampshire needs to move forward on gay marriage or gay civil unions. But before it can do that, the same-sex marriage commission must be publicly scorned for taking a giant leap backward.
Posted by Mike Pride at December 5, 2005 01:36 PM
Comments
Thanks so much for both the blog and the editorial. I knew the commission report would be as inane and hateful as its chairman, and I'm glad to see the Monitor take a strong stand against it. Frankly, I haven't read the majority report and have no desire to do so - it would just make me both angry and depressed. I'm glad to see that you've got a stronger stomach and much better communication skills. It's always evident from both your blog and the Monitor editorials that you are truly a man of words (and principles).
Posted by: Betsy Snider at December 6, 2005 03:28 PM
I picked up the jist of the report but I have not read substantial parts of the over 100 pages of text so I'm no authority.
That stated, I find your blog lacking in specifics from the text to educate me on the difference between the commission's 1) reluctance to break with tradtions and 2) their hateful attidutes toward gays.
Quit bloviating and give me a cogent arguement based upon the text.
Posted by: fullert at December 8, 2005 10:24 AM
I have to admit that I only skimmed the majority report and that it angered me to the point of never wanting to attempt to read it again. That being said, the single most infuriating item in the report for me was that the individuals on the commision, none of whom are qualified to make this decision, announced that being homosexual was a choice. Unfortunately I can see from those statements that those individuals probably long for the days when homosexuality was deemed a deviant sexual behavior and grouped gays into the same category as child molesters. Thank you for your thoughtful writting.
Posted by: Joey W at December 9, 2005 04:38 PM