To the Editor:
I am writing to address Matt Soriano's bit of idiocy in the June 17th issue of The Dartmouth. First, I would like to point out that the court's ruling in the Burnett/McBurnett case does not imply any equality between a person and an animal -- otherwise, Mr. Burnett would've suffered far greater repercussions for his action. Or, he may as well just have tossed Ms. McBurnett out the window (at least then he would've made a small dent in the overwhelming number of poor drivers on the road).
To address Ms. McBurnett's remark to CNN suggesting that animal cruelty count as violent crime, well, she's entitled to her opinion, isn't she?
For that matter, although I will agree that a crime against a dog is not qualitatively the same as crime against a human, Mr. Burnett's act was still one of violence, hence, a violent crime.
Far more troubling than the California incident regarding Leo "Road Kill" the Dog is the diatribe into which Mr. Soriano uses that anecdote as a segue. The implication that Vermont's civil unions are in any way the same as a man marrying a cow (or, to be all inclusive, a woman wedding her prize rooster) is sickening to anyone whose priorities don't stem from some inexplicable moral crusade against something that is in no way (secular way, at least, which is all that need matter in the face of justice) immoral. Because Vermont allows two consenting human beings of the same sex to engage in a monogamous relationship and receive the same benefits as two people of opposite sexes, Mr. Soriano feels that the Green Mountain State has lubed the slippery slope towards barnyard escapades.
So, the broader suggestion one reads from Mr. Soriano is that just as animals ought not be given the same rights as human beings, not all human beings ought to have the same rights either.
Where does Mr. Soriano feel the right for heterosexual marriage stems from, since he sees homosexual partnership as being the moral equivalent to sex with an animal? I don't remember ever seeing it written in some supreme moral law that it is or should be anyone's business who someone chooses for companionship, nor that the choice ought carry with it certain benefits only if the companion is of a different gender. So Mr. Soriano, in this case, either extend the same privileges (hospital visiting hours, etc.) to homosexual couples, or take them from heterosexual couples. After all, I'm sure that you wouldn't mind telling a young man or woman dying in the hospital that they can't have the companionship of a loved one in their last hours because that person is of the same sex.
Mr. Soriano states: "the franchise of marriage is being expanded again." The franchise of marriage is an arbitrary thing to begin with; to suggest that its "expansion" is wrong because it is somehow "logically absurd" (when in fact, the opposite is true) seems foolhardy. While I agree with Mr. Soriano's closing remark, "we need to take a hard look at where our society is going today," I found the rest of his column to be at best disjointed and illogical, and at worst, as I have just addressed, homophobic, heterosexist and all those other buzzwords for ignorant.