While I am impressed with Nancy Jacobs' concern for Maryland's small businesses ("Hundreds crowd Senate for hearing on same-sex marriage," Feb. 8), she is surely aware that her gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered constituents make all manner of purchases — we buy groceries, we shop for clothes, we purchase movie tickets. Defending a hypothetical bigoted bakery against the horrors of the gay dollar is simply an example of the level of mental acrobatics opponents of same-sex marriage have to go through in order to argue an increasingly untenable position.

Civil marriage has no effect on the teachings and practices of religious groups, and if businesses are that afraid to conduct transactions with gay citizens, we can always take our business elsewhere.

Jessica Fehr, Baltimore