In a local commentary (“Equal rights, yes: Just don’t call it ‘marriage’”) published March 2, Helen Small contends that she is for equal rights for Maine’s gay and lesbian citizens.

“Am I for equal rights for gays and lesbians? Of course, I am: Yes, a resounding yes,” she writes.

She then spends the rest of her letter attempting to explain why she isn’t for equal rights for Maine’s gay and lesbian citizens: “But the coupling of two people of the same sex should not be called marriage because it simply isn’t.”

While I commend Ms. Small for supporting the right of Maine’s gay and lesbian citizens to enjoy all the rights and responsibilities of marriage — but don’t you dare call it marriage — her approach smacks of charity, a graciousness of the majority, bread crumbs.

Through the graciousness of the majority of the state of Maine, my partner of 21 years and I currently enjoy a “domestic partner registry.” This document gives us inheritance protections and medical decision protections.

While important in its own right, it is charity, nothing but “graciousness from the majority.” And it turns us into second class citizens.

In an analogous situation, Proposition 8, passed by a majority in California in November 2008, stripped away the word “ marriage” from same-sex couples who were already legally married in that state.

A three-judge panel of the 9th U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Feb. 7 of this year that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional. The justices concluded that the law has no purpose other than to deny gay couples marriage, since California already grants them all the rights and benefits of marriage if they register as domestic partners:

“Proposition 8 serves no purpose, and had no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California, and to officially reclassify their relationships and families as inferior,” the court said. “The Constitution simply does not allow for laws of this sort.”

And in a moment of brevity they added: “ Had Marilyn Monroe’s film been called ‘How to Register a Domestic Partnership with a Millionaire,’ it would not have conveyed the same meaning as did her famous movie, even though the underlying drama for same-sex couples is no different.”

Imagine getting down on one knee with the intention of proposing to the one you have loved so deeply for so long and the only words available to you are, “ Will you enter into a civil union with me?”

Or imagine wanting to show how much you really care for the one you love and how much you want to spend the rest of your lives together, so you spend the money to hire a pilot to do a bit of sky writing. Imagine everyone’s surprise when the words begin to appear across that blue summer sky: “Will you register a domestic partnership with me?”

Ms. Small, in her commentary, wants to deny marriage to same- sex couples based upon her conviction that only heterosexual couples procreate and therefore marriage somehow needs protection. That reasoning was easily and summarily dismissed by the three-judge panel of the 9th U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals when they found that denying gays the right to marry could not be rationally related to the government objective of encouraging heterosexuals to get married and have children in wedlock because taking away the rights of one group cannot legitimately encourage another to exercise those rights.

In other words, if you deny my partner and me the right to marry, how can that possibly encourage any heterosexual couple to get married and have children? And, conversely, how can denying my partner and me the right to marry prevent a heterosexual couple from marrying, having kids, and living a full and wonderful life together?

The whole premise is patently ridiculous on its face. The purpose of the U.S. Constitution is to protect rights, not prevent them, and separate is never equal.

The Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, applied correctly, would condemn even the fact that we have to resort to the ballot box to secure equal rights for a minority in our state. But, apparently, it is either that or bread crumbs and a life of second class citizenship, which is something that I, my partner, and hundreds of thousands of other Mainers cannot and will not accept.

Please vote “yes” in November to give Maine’s gay and lesbian couples the right to marry.

Mark Fish lives in Harpswell.

letters@timesrecord.comswell.