01:00 AM EST on Tuesday, February 10, 2004

Conservatives would have us believe that gay marriage threatens traditional marriage. But marriage and the "traditional family" have been in trouble for decades -- for a host of reasons that have nothing to do with homosexual partnerships. No law against same-sex marriage will change the divorce rate; no constitutional amendment defining marriage as a union of a man and a woman could have saved my parents' marriage, or my own; and no legalized bigotry will heal America's broken families.

It's time to stop letting narrow-minded zealots define this issue. If conservatives want to talk about saving marriage and the family, why don't they stop playing on people's fears and address the real issues? Why don't they talk about why it's easier to get married than to get a driver's license; why so many men abuse their partners and so many women think they deserve abuse; why there's so little political debate about what it would really take to keep marriages and families strong?

Let's put the debate on gay marriage back where it belongs, as an issue of civil rights. Within my lifetime, it was illegal in many states for a black man to marry a white woman. Should this kind of fear and bigotry rule the lives of Americans who differ from the majority? Or should we stand up for justice and the pursuit of happiness for all Americans?

KAREN S. HAYES

Narragansett