I’d like to comment on Aaron McDuffie’s article, which ran in the Aug. 22 edition, entitled, “Supreme Court does not ‘invent’ new minorities.”
As I tell my Intensive Reading students, English is an ambiguous language, and vocabulary words must be defined within their context. True, in the general and public sense, he fulfills the definition of a minority as an African-American, homosexual and registered member of GOP.
I imagine he’s a fiscal conservative and social liberal with membership in the Republican Log Cabin group. His citation of statistics support his point … but Associate Justice Scalia’s meaning in context refers to the Court equating gays with minority status as a civil right.
With the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech at the Washington Mall, we must not denigrate the Civil Right Movement by demanding that gay rights be a continuation of this movement. Homosexuality is a choice, while the pigment of one’s skin is not. There is no empirical, scientific evidence for homosexual predisposition.
My good friend from college days made this choice after being molested by a man while selling door-to-door LA Times subscriptions. In his struggle for sexual identity, the college chaplain suggested that he explore the lifestyle. He then chose to become a gay man.
Gay marriage is contrary to thousands of years of cultural and historical precedent, physiology, religious morality/ethics and empirical data. Now I can hear the ad hominem cries of homophobe and intolerant bigot. Provide the evidence that I’m wrong.
Mr. McDuffie’s citing of the “separate but equal” case of Brown v. Board of Education, Miranda v. Arizona and Bush v. Gore having nothing to do with the Justice Scalia’s arguments.
Sadly, he concludes his article with ad hominems that do nothing to further his arguments. As a political science major, he would do well to provide more concrete arguments with evidence to support his contention.
—Mark A. Peter, USC-EPI Adjunct Faculty