All over Kentucky and the United States there are worries that the institution of marriage is under attack and many say there must be people excluded from participating in it. There are protests in the streets and signs around that all promote this exclusivity. To back up this view, appeals are being made to the Bible and traditional values.
This sort of thing has happened before. It was the long fight for interracial marriage that began in 1948 when California was the first state to make it legal for mixed race marriages and lingered on until 1967 with a Supreme Court ruling. Looking around Bowling Green today, it is difficult to believe that we have not been thrown back into the Civil Rights era. What is being discusses has changed, but it is motivated by the same fear, hatred, and intolerance.
Everyone will have the opportunity on November 2 to vote on an amendment to the Kentucky constitution that bans marriage from same-gender couples. This is the redundant part of the amendment. Kentucky already has laws that prohibit same-gender marriage. What many people don’t know is that the Amendment also bans civil unions between anyone, regardless of their sexual orientation. It will affect a same-gender couple that has been together for twenty years just like it will affect an elderly heterosexual couple who are not married so they don’t lose their Social Security benefits. Neither of these couples would be able to share health insurance or take care of end-of-life medical and legal issues. This amendment does unfairly targets homosexuals but it concerns everyone, though the proponents of this amendment would like you to believe otherwise. In fact, the only arguments that are heard in favor of the Amendment are always based upon religion or “traditional values”. This is not the way America should make decisions and none of our fellow Americans should ever be made second-class citizens.
Denying people the basic human right to marry the person they love was not a good idea in the Civil Rights era, and it is not a good idea today. Hopefully it will not take us 19 years to figure that out this time. The first step can be taken Tuesday when we vote to preserve civil unions in Kentucky. In the words of Coretta Scott King, “I appeal in everyone who believes in Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream to make room at the table of brotherhood and sisterhood for lesbian and gay people.”

Jason Dudgeon
(270) 781-4560
Louisville, KY senior