Briefly, on Senate Bill 12, here in New Mexico
I was reading in the Albuquerque Journal(the local paper here) today how Senate Bill 12, a bill which would have extended to gays and lesbians in New Mexico the same legal benefits that married couples enjoy under New Mexico law (including the right to take medical leave to care for an ill partner and the authority to make end-of-life decisions on each other's behalf ) was stalled in the New Mexico Senate Judiciary Committee after a split vote on February 2. I guess it takes a while for news of any real, local import to get ink in the news here, but, as they say, whatever. The article in the paper mentions quite pointedly the religious underpinnings behind what happened to the bill. I was feeling disgusted about this and so I wrote the following to the paper’s Letters to the Editor section:
To Whom It May Concern,
It was genuinely disheartening to learn the fate of Senate Bill 12 in Wednesday’s Albuquerque Journal (“Dems “Defend Positions on Partnerships”). What a sad commentary it is on the state of affairs in New Mexico that both Democrats and Republicans can find “common ground” by joining together to trample on the rights of others. How terrible it was to read that Sen. George Muñoz received 1500 “thank you letters” in return for helping to deny some New Mexicans their due civil liberties. What sort of mean-spirited person does one have to be to “thank” another for acting to curtail the rights of a specific portion of the population? Observe how in each of the paragraphs dedicated to Munoz’s, Sanchez’s and Martinez’s respective constituencies, Albuquerque Journal reporter Dan Boyd refers to the populations as “strongly Catholic”. This naturally leads one to wonder: do Catholics consider it a kind of “strength” to speak out against the civil rights of others? Much like the “strongly Catholic” communities in New Mexico, dictatorships throughout history and across the world, too, have viewed themselves as “strong” when they have oppressed others.
Yours truly,
Rich Boucher
1404 San Carlos SW
Apt. 11
Albuquerque, New Mexico 87104