The American Spectator

p> IN SICKNESS AND IN HEALTH br> Re: George Neumayr’s What the Counterculture has Joined Together /p> p>After 200 years of trying, American Utopians can look to California as their best effort. The worry is that the current experiment in perfect living will collapse and the perfect state will become the State of Dystopia where dreamers become the victims of reality. Hope is on the way as Sam Adams Brewery has begun marketing Utopias Beer which has 25 percent alcohol content or 50 proof and is guaranteed to enhance euphoria in the imbiber. br> — Howard Lohmuller br> Seabrook, Texas /p>

George Neumayr quotes Roger Cardinal Mahony as follows “Some benefits currently sought by same-sex partners can already be obtained without regard to marital status….Other desired benefits such as sharing in a partner’s health insurance could be made available without the drastic step of a cultural or legal redefinition of marriage”.

In other words, the argument over establishing an absolute equivalence for homosexual behavior versus heterosexual behavior has been reduced to the Alamo of the word “marriage”. Everything of substance, in every respect, has been rendered equivalent. Filing joint tax returns, adopting children, etc., the same. But are Crockett, Bowie and Travis expected to sacrifice themselves for the word and not the substance? This is madness. We live in a real world, not a theoretical one. Words do have consequences. But consequences pre-empt words. You can stick a fork into consequences, but not into words.

p>If Californians and Americans do not wish substantive differences between civil unions and “traditional” marriages, then it’s time to recognize that the word has been rendered meaningless. br> — Frank Natoli