Once again, state voters – this time in Maine, hardly a conservative stronghold – have voted down same-sex marriage. Leaving what she thought would be a victory party after last week’s balloting, an emotional Cecelia Burnett said, “I don’t understand what the fear is, why people are so afraid of this change.”

That’s a big part of the gay marriage side’s problem: They cannot imagine why, aside from bigotry, anyone would disagree with them. To be sure, anyone on the traditional marriage side who doesn’t understand that denying marriage to same-sex couples imposes a serious burden on them is either willfully ignorant or hard-hearted. The thing is, empathy should go both ways.

Leaving aside that there is undoubtedly a significant number of people who vote against gay marriage because they flat-out don’t like gay people, there are serious and important reasons to vote against same-sex marriage – and these deserve to be taken seriously.

See more here.

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Tags: Equal Rights, Gay Marriage, Marriage equality

This entry was posted on Monday, November 9th, 2009 at 4:18 pm and is filed under Same Sex Marriage. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.