Letter to the Editor

Regarding 'Letters to the Editor' (Monday, Dec. 5)

A letter published yesterday attempted to point out discrepancies between the text of the PJP amicus brief and the two-paragraph summary of the same brief presented to students as they vote on the referendum. The criticisms of the summary are ill-informed and misleading.

The critics wrote that "the word 'race' does not appear once" in the brief, and so assert that the USG misled the student body by including it in the summary. In reality, the comparison to the demise of Jim Crow laws — race-based discrimination — to current discrimination against LGBT persons is frequently and explicitly made in the brief. Further, the brief references the case of Loving vs. Virginia — in Loving, the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated laws banning marriage between persons of different races.

The critics complain that the word "injustice" appears in the summary of the brief but not in the brief itself. This is an odd criticism, as the very premise of the brief is that, as mentioned in the paragraph summary, "a manifest injustice [is] occurring." It was the injustice of the status quo that compelled PJP to write the brief; the intent of the brief is to end that injustice. And so, it's not clear that the criticism that the word "injustice" cannot be found in the brief's text is of much value. Thomas Bohnett '07 President, Princeton Justice Project