Arguments for legalizing same-sex marriages are often based on justice and equal rights. However, other means can be found to guarantee the legal rights of same-sex unions without redefining marriage as it has been lived and understood for centuries around the world.

To radically change the legal and moral understanding of marriage for the sake of protecting the rights of same-sex unions is itself unjust. It undermines marriage as we have known it to be between a man and a woman in order to foster love and children and to provide a stable family of a father and mother to raise those children.

Justice demands protecting this institution of marriage between a man and a woman and providing legislation which likewise protects the legal rights of same-sex unions.

Maurice Theriault, Lewiston