The Free Press, Mankato, MN

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March 8, 2010

Your View: Don't equate consensual sex with sodomy

Max Hailperin, St. Peter

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Peter Etzell’s recent letter to the editor makes a hasty segue from the topic of same-sex marriage to that of sodomy. Apparently, he equates marriage with sexual intercourse and equates consensual same-sex intercourse with sodomy. Both of these equations are in error.

Regarding the first equation, same-sex couples may already legally have intercourse, so long as they do it outside of wedlock. Nor may they be married even if they remain chaste.

What is currently at issue is not the intercourse, but all the other things that married couples do. To take a prosaic example, I recently calculated for my students that my wife and I had been married exactly 8,593 days. Should Minnesota law really forbid same-sex couples from doing that same calculation?

Further, “sodomy” is inappropriate as a word for consensual same-sex intercourse. The word originates from Genesis 19, in which no element of consent is to be found. The men of Sodom insist that Lot send out the two men staying with him to be raped; in fact, these original sodomists were willing to break down Lot’s door to get at their prey.



 

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