Forced marriage?

I wonder if Bruce Steele sees the irony in his January 20 column, "No Special Rights" [Letter From the Editor in Chief]. While encouraging people to be "grown up enough to believe in their own specialness without the need to belittle their neighbors," Steele positively belittled gay critics of same-sex marriage by suggesting that we simply "recoil at same-sex domesticity and parenting because these things threaten the sexy outlaw status that is precious to [our] self-image."

Steele has apparently joined the right wing in caricaturing our community. Needless to say, some of the most vigorous and insightful critics of our increasing obsession with marriage happen to be lesbian scholars who are in committed relationships and are raising children. Likewise, after eight years together, my partner and I also ought to be able to question the value of embracing marriage or mimicking traditional heterosexual norms without being subjected to Steele's grotesque stereotyping and demeaning pop psychology.

More fundamentally, Steele simply embraces the same attitude of mocking and dismissive superiority that traditionalists have long used against gays, even those in the kind of 17-year relationship that Steele claims to have. This pro-marriage condescension only increases my skepticism about malting marriage the central focus of our movement. A license to sneer sanctimoniously at others is not my idea of a civil right.

Stephen Clark, Albany, N.Y.

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