Editor, OBSERVER:
Polls say that a majority of Americans support giving gay people the same rights everyone else has.
"For the first time in Gallup's tracking of the issue, a majority of Americans - 53 percent - believe same-sex marriage should be recognized by the law as valid, with the same rights as traditional marriages. The increase since last year came exclusively among political independents and Democrats. Republicans' views did not change."
Gallup finds 64 percent of Americans saying gay or lesbian relations between consenting adults should be legal, the highest since it first asked the question more than 30 years ago" (Gallup Poll).
Now if "most citizens still classify themselves as Christian," then it must follow that a majority of Christians support giving gay people the same rights everyone else has on the grounds that gay people are people, just as any ethnic group or racial group are also people.
In our country where there are many religions, one religion's view cannot force others to that one religion's view. That is what democracy does, so that every person can believe according to their conscience, and not be forced against their conscience to believe according to one group's view.
So it is good that Max Martin and his group are working on reconciliation of different kinds of people and that he includes reconciling people who are gay with all of us and to reconcile those who are for the rights of gays with those who are not.
TIMOTHY HOYER,
county legislator, District 14,
Jamestown
