Why Gay
Marriage Should Be Legal
Written December 2003
Marriage
is currently defined as “the legal union of a man and a woman as husband
and wife” (The American Heritage High School Dictionary). The law
goes along with this definition, by making homosexual marriage illegal. However,
there are people trying to make homosexual marriage—gay marriage—legal. It
should be legal.
The Constitution of the United States says that there
is a separation between church and state. This does not hold true when it
comes to marriage laws. The definition of marriage as a union between a man
and a woman is a religious definition, and it is based upon religious principals.
People support it with the Bible, and the fact that the bible says that homosexuality
is a sin. The law shouldn’t care what the bible says—the bible is a religious
text, and the laws of the United States are not supposed to be based on religion,
according to the Constitution of the United States. Therefore, it’s unconstitutional
to put a ban on gay marriage.
Allowing heterosexual marriage and disallowing gay marriage
is just another form of segregation. It is like saying, “We’ll give all the
people with our preferred sexual orientation—heterosexuality—the right to
marry and all the protections that go along with it, and we’ll tell all those
homosexuals that they can’t have it.” There are more than 300 laws that are
granted with a legal marriage, such as access to a spouse’s insurance, hospital
visitation, and homestead protections. By allowing heterosexual marriage and
disallowing gay marriage, it’s like saying that heterosexuals can have all
these protections and gays can’t, setting an invisible line between the two
sexual orientations. Segregation between the races was abolished in the 1960s,
under the ruling that segregation was unconstitutional. If segregation is
not right between races, why should it be right between sexual orientations?
Marriage is a basic right. Excluding a few cultural
minorities, people here in the United States are allowed to marry whomever
they choose, as long as they are of legal age. Correction: Heterosexuals
may marry whomever they choose. Gay people can’t. Yes, they can choose to
marry if they want to, but they’re only allowed to marry those of the opposite
sex. By definition, gay people aren’t attracted to members of the opposite
sex, so why would they want to marry them? They want to marry the people
that they love, their partners of the same sex. Why deny them that? They’re
not asking anything special. They’re asking for the same right that heterosexuals
take for granted: the right to marry the people they love.
There are many people out there who are uncomfortable
with the idea of gay marriage. They give many reasons as to why gay marriage
shouldn’t be allowed, many of which can be proven fallacious.
There are other definitions of marriage out there, besides
the dictionary definition. Anthropologist Kingsley Davis defined marriage
as “social recognition and approval…of a couple’s engaging in sexual intercourse
and bearing and rearing children.” Under definitions like this, there is some
room for controversy. Under this definition, marriage would not apply to
couples that either chose not to have children or are infertile and therefore
cannot have children, not just gay couples. That’s the problem with definitions
of marriage that have strict requirements. Too many people fall in loopholes
in the definitions, making them invalid. When people hide behind definitions
like this in saying that gay marriage is wrong, they are hiding behind a definition
that is not valid.
One concern people have keeping the traditional family
roles fulfilled. Some people say that marriage needs to be heterosexual because
heterosexual marriage provides a father and a mother for children while gay
marriage wouldn’t, and children need both a father and a mother to grow up
correctly. But what about single-parent families? What can be said about families
where there is a divorce, or where one parent dies? In those situations, there
is only a mother or only a father. In saying that there needs to be both
a mother and a father in order for children to grow up correctly, people are
saying that single-parent families are wrong, too. That was not the intent,
but it falls under the same category, contradicting that argument.
People are concerned about the effects gay marriage
would have on children. How is it bad, though? Why does it matter what sex
a child’s parents are? Sex of a parent has nothing to do with the parent’s
love for the child, or the parent’s treatment of a child. How is having two
mothers or two fathers worse than having an abusive mother or father? There’s
no guarantee that a child will have a wonderful family, whether the parents
are a mother and a father, two mothers, or two fathers. The sex of the parents
doesn’t make a difference.
Gay marriage can work out. There has been gay marriage
in Holland for two years now, and things are turning out fine there. Marriage
registry records in the Holland show that 7-8% of their marriages are between
gay couples, and people hardly notice it by this point. Gay marriage in Holland
was only an issue until it was legalized, and then over time gay marriage
became simply a natural thing.
To date, several places have changed the marriage laws.
In April 2001 Holland became the first country to allow gay marriages, followed
by Belgium in January of 2003. In July 2003 British Columbia and Ontario,
two provinces in Canada, changed their laws, with the federal government working
towards changing the national definition of marriage. Taiwan is working towards
legalizing gay marriage. In the United States, Vermont legalized gay civil
unions in December 1999, and Massachusetts has just recently declared that
banning gay marriage is unconstitutional, and their law is being changed.
Action is being taken, if slowly. Slowly, laws are being changed and gay people
are being given the rights that they deserve. Events are leading society in
the right direction: the direction towards legal gay marriage.