The Free Press, Mankato, MN

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October 14, 2012

Your View: Marriage debate has echoes of past

Herbert W. Chilstrom, St. Peter

The marriage debate? Nothing new.

Roll your calendars back 150 years. Guess what? They were debating the issue of marriage. As the Minnesota frontier was being settled there were voices calling for a ban on marriages of Caucasians and Native Americans. And guess who was in the forefront of the battle? It was Mankato attorney Daniel Buck. He declared that such marriages were “a violation of nature’s purest laws.”

Buck asserted that the only solution was to isolate the progeny of these mixed marriages, thus “bleaching out the color of the aborigines” and producing “a better humanity.”

Now fast forward to our time. There are hundreds in the Mankato area who can boast of having Native American blood running through their veins. For them this heritage is an asset rather than a liability.

This may seem farfetched all these years later. Yet, it was only a short time ago at a gathering just east of Mankato that a participant in a discussion about the place of homosexual persons in our society suggested that we need to “fence off homosexual persons until they die out.”

Most folks I mingle with count among family members and friends same-gender couples in faithful, lifelong commitments of fidelity. We believe they deserve the same privileges others take for granted.

We need to ask: If the “yes” votes prevail, will anything change? Of course not.

Same gender persons will continue to seek out relationships that will be enduring and for a lifetime. Why make life more difficult for them?

Voting “no” to the marriage amendment is one small step in ensuring greater stability for them and for all.

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