The Globe ran a bunch of letters to the editor about the marriage equality vote in today's paper. Reading them I wasn't sure if I would bother to blog about them or not. They were pretty run of the mill. The same types of arguments you saw going into the thing you saw coming out afterwards.

There were five letters for marriage equality and four against. This probably reflected the volume of mail on both sides, although I can't say for sure. I suspect that the tone and content were fairly representative, too, but that could be my own naive credulity when it comes to The Liberal Media.

Because it just seems to me the pro-equality camp was pretty reasonable and well-spoken, while the other side provided the best arguments against their own cause.

Some were poignant in a way. Take the letter from a dude in Methuen:

PLEASE STOP trying to convince me that the vote on the proposed gay marriage amendment does not have any impact on my marriage now that I have had to explain that the wedding ring I wear is symbolic of the relationship I have with my wife and not my husband.

First of all, if people are walking up to you on the street and asking if your wedding ring is for your wife or husband a marriage amendment's not going to help you, though I find it hard to believe this has ever happened to you. And FYI: gays have been wearing matching "commitment rings" for years.

But the real question here is: what are you, twelve years old? Yes, your fear of possibly being mistaken for gay, or having to explain that you're not, which has nothing to do with marriage or rings (maybe it's your hair), far, far outweighs the long list of inconveniences facing same-sex couples whose unions aren't recognized, and certainly merits forcing them back into the closet so that your ring won’t ever be mistaken for a gay wedding ring at the gay bar you go to (I know you get a lot more attention at The Ramrod if people think it’s a "straight wedding ring").

Next!

Along the same lines, but in a way much sadder, is a letter filled with late-eighties post-structuralist mumbo-jumbo from someone smart enough to read "queer theory" but not smart enough to know it's mostly bunkum:

THE REJECTION of a proposed amendment to ban same-sex marriage represents a grave threat to the state of democracy in Massachusetts.

Queer theorists and their political followers profess to colonizing traditional institutions for the establishment of a radically subversive order. What we see in Massachusetts is an aggressive colonization of marriage by such activists. They want to transform what is normative and mainstream (and sacred and natural), pushing conservatives and traditionalists to the margins of their own institutions.

Conservatives in Massachusetts are being bullied by such activists and the compliant politicians that blindly follow. Not only have conservatives lost territory on the definition of marriage, they have been denied a voice in the debate.

The refusal by the State House to let us vote reveals Massachusetts as a liberal totalitarian state with little respect for its conservative constituents.

I calculated all the ten dollar words and phrases in this letter; it’s worth about three hundred dollars on the open market.

The kicker is the “liberal totalitarian state.” People can use awfully big words to sound awfully stupid, can’t they?
Long and short of it: you need to get out more, dude.

But this next woman definitely needs to stay in:

THE JUNE 14 vote at the State House against the marriage amendment was a vote in support of sodomy. Will the sky fall in? Perhaps not. Will nature seek revenge? Time will tell.

(Gotta love those lesbian sodomites, eh?)

I can’t quite account for the lack of generosity many have shown in this “debate,” except to say that misery loves company.

The last letter in this group is the most seemingly reasonable, but even it doesn’t stand up so well to a little cursory examination:

AS AN orthodox Catholic, I found I could enjoy the joy of the people celebrating the Legislature's decision for gay and lesbian marriage June 14.

Every person is precious and so is every commitment of two people to love generously.

But permit me to speak for the opponents — sad-faced and silent — the roughly 50 percent of the population, maybe more, maybe less (now we won't know for sure), who would have voted the other way.

Can those of you who celebrate that vote also rejoice with me over people I know and love whose faith has empowered them to find new freedom and peace by not living out their homosexuality? And could you even rejoice with me over teens and young adults I know and love who learned they had a choice and were able to leave homosexuality?

Probably such reciprocal rejoicing is too much to ask on so polarized an issue.

I certainly rejoice whenever out of fear or shame or social pressure someone denies themselves that most fundamental, human solace of honest intimacy we have in this life. Just as I rejoice when a Jew, for fear or shame or social pressure, denies his Judaism, or an African American denies his blackness.

Not that I have any problem with folks choosing celibacy out of commitment to a creed. But that’s different. Nowadays that’s a matter of conscience and a choice in most cases arrived at freely, not through coercion, social ostracism, intimidation and fear of violence or rejection.

I mean, that’s the kind of world I want to live in. Don’t you? One where busybodies and know-it-alls dictate who gets to sodomize whom. (If you think heterosexuals aren’t doing it, too—again, don’t leave your house.) A world in which lies and innuendo are “normative” and plain-spoken truth is “radically subversive”. One where intimidation and coercion are the only means to social order. One where perfectly intelligent, capable, and loving adults are supposed to live alone in misery, squelching their human potential so as not to disturb the fragile self-image and dainty sensibilities of the bullies and the creeps in their communities. Sounds like Utopia, doesn't it?  Hey, pass the grape Kool-Aid, will ya?

Ultimately, that’s what this whole thing’s about. About being adult enough to live in a world where not everyone is like you. And being big enough to overcome your fear of The Other and engage with people as people, not as “homosexuals” (or “ex-homosexuals”), “sodomites,” or “radically subversive, normative-busting, queer theorizing liberal totalitarian statists.”

You might say, well, back atcha. But the truth is, while I would not fancy having dinner with the woman from Medford who’s predicting Nature’s revenge on the sodomites (although I think I may have met the dude from Methuen—he was the one who kept taking breaks from blowing me in the bushes to assure me that his wedding ring was “symbolic of the relationship I have with my wife”), I’m not proposing any laws to limit anyone’s ability to make an unmitigated asshat of themselves, either. I make my living off of asshattery. I would be shooting myself in the foot

And that’s the point. The two sides in this “debate” are not equal. Only one side is in the tradition of liberalism on which this nation was founded and which has allowed it to flourish, and it ain’t the side predicting fire and brimstone to smite the sodomites, let me tell ya.

Like I said, this set of letters is the best argument against letting people vote on other people’s rights I can think of.