Your article about Dan Savage's recent campus visit, published on April 18, 2006, grossly misrepresents the upcoming ballot initiative regarding gay marriage.
The statement that Savage commented on the decision to put gay marriage on the ballot during the 2006 election season\ is woefully inadequate in representing what will actually appear on the ballot. Putting the legalization of gay marriage on the ballot—which the article implies—is precisely what the proposed initiative does not do.
What the proposal does do, however, is re-ban gay marriage (since gay marriage is already illegal in Wisconsin). But more, the proposed ban outlaws any ""legal status identical or substantially similar to that of marriage,"" which includes civil unions and likely even domestic partnerships.
Voting against the amendment does not legalize gay marriage, as the article suggests it may. Voting for the ban, on the other hand, makes it legally impossible for the university or any other organization to offer domestic partnership benefits, something that has and will continue to make it difficult for UW-Madison to attract the best and brightest faculty, staff and students.
Likewise, a vote in favor of the ban becomes an effective endorsement of discrimination, something the people of this state, community and University should not and cannot stand for.
Matt Berg
UW-Madison Senior
English
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