Why do Virginians care so much about who loves whom in state?

Date published: 3/9/2005

Give a Letter of the Year award to Billy Plumb!

His letter, "Childbearing does not exactly define a marriage," in the March 1 Free Lance-Star, is the finest appeal I have ever heard for compassionate and equal treatment of our homosexual friends and neighbors.

Billy's story of his birth out of wedlock, and subsequent adoption by loving parents, appropriately focuses the notion of family on children with loving and responsible parents.

Billy's testimony to this core value is that it wouldn't have mattered to him if an equally caring gay couple would have raised him. How can the Family Foundation argue with that?

My life experience has allowed me to know more than a dozen homosexuals, whom I find on average more interesting and comfortable to be with than heterosexuals.

My wife and I were most recently acquainted with two lesbians in our Fredericksburg community, Tibby and Barbara. But that relationship is ending with their migration from Virginia to escape our state's relentless denying of their civil rights ["Couple feels forced to leave," Jan. 9].

Tibby was voted best teacher during her teaching career, and Barbara is an accomplished artist. How have these two talented women threatened our community?

A recent Economist magazine contains a telling commentary on how the acceptance of homosexuals in Britain is reflected in their welcome to Britain's armed forces. The story provides an example of Gunner Tara Thompson (serving in an artillery battery in Iraq), whose "male comrades gave not two hoots that she preferred girls. She was good at her job, they said, and Ms. Thompson agreed, adding: 'I love the big guns.'"

Surely we should not give two hoots, either.

Carl Groth

Bumpass

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Date published: 3/9/2005