(D.J.) Dylan Lintelman (FGCU): Gay Marriage Rights

Who has the right to get married?  Who determines who has the right to get married?  Is marriage a religious or government based institution?  These are all important questions that we need to answer here in this blog.

 More than half of all people in the United States oppose gay marriage, even though three fourths are otherwise supportive of gay rights. This means that many of the same people who are even passionately in favor of gay rights oppose gays on this one issue of gay marriage.

“Gay” relationships are those which can be characterized as homozygous, or between two people of the same sex.  As our society evolves, people are becoming more and more accepting of this activity as being part of our culture.  After all, America is a huge melting pot of people from all different societies and cultures that have come together.  However, evenn though many people (especially liberal people) in our society are accepting of this behavior, there are some people in our culture that downright do not accept this behavior and they having many interesting reasons for doing so. Gay people have been around since the dawn of man kind.  There is mention of homosexuals in the bible and other religious texts of that time period.  There are several reasons why people of today’s generation oppose gay marriage, I will discuss a few and include responses.

MARRIAGE IS A RELIGIOUS INSTITUTION: This is, of course, related to the motive above. But it is really subtly different. It’s based on the assumption that the state has the responsibility to “sanctify” marriages - a fundamentally religious idea. Here we’re dealing with people trying to enforce their religious doctrines on someone else, but by doing it through weakening the separation of church and state, by undermining the Bill of Rights. Not that there’s anything new about this, of course. But the attempt itself runs against the grain of everything the First Amendment stands for - one does not truly have freedom of religion if one does not have the right to freedom from religion as well. It would seem to me that anyone who feels that the sanctity of their marriage is threatened by a gay couple down the street having the right to marry, is mighty insecure about their religion and their marriage anyway.

IT OFFENDS RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS:  Whose religion? Many mainstream Christian denominations, to be sure, and definitely most branches of Islam and Orthodox Judaism, but outside those, most religions are unopposed to gay marriage, and many actually favor it. When the Mormon church arrogantly claimed to represent all religions in the Baehr vs. Lewin trial in Hawaii, the principal Buddhist sect in that state made it very clear that the Mormon church didn’t represent them, and made it very clear that they support the right of gay couples to marry. That particular Buddhist sect claims many more members in Hawaii than does the Mormon church. In a society that claims to offer religious freedom, the use of the power of the state to enforce private religious sensibilities is an affront to all who would claim the right to worship according to the dictates of their own conscience.’

GAY COUPLES CAN’T RAISE CHILDREN: That’s an interesting one, in light of who society does allow to get married and bring children into their marriage. Check it out: murderers, convicted felons of all sorts, even known child molestors are all allowed to freely marry and procreate, and do so every day, with hardly a second thought, much less a protest, by these same critics. So if children are truly the priority here, why is this allowed? The fact is that many gay couples raise children, adopted and occasionally their own from failed attempts at heterosexual marriages.  Several scientific studies. have shown that the outcomes of the children raised in the homes of gay and lesbian couples are just as good as those of straight couples. The differences have been shown again and again to be insignificant. Psychologists tell us that what makes the difference is the love and commitment of the parents, not their gender. The studies are very clear about that. And gay people are as capable of loving children as fully as anyone else.

MARRIAGE IS BETWEEN ONE MAN AND ONE WOMAN: Well, that’s the most often heard argument, one even codified in a recently passed U.S. federal law. Yet it is easily the weakest. Who says what marriage is and by whom it is to be defined? The married? The marriable? Isn’t that kind of like allowing a banker to decide who is going to own the money in stored in his vaults? It seems to me that justice demands that if the straight community cannot show a compelling reason to deny the institution of marriage to gay people, it shouldn’t be denied. And such simple, nebulous declarations, with no real moral argument behind them, are hardly compelling reasons. They’re really more like an expression of prejudice than any kind of a real argument. The concept of not denying people their rights unless you can show a compelling reason to deny them is the very basis of the American ideal of human rights.

So whats the big deal? If two people love each other, shouldn’t they be allowed the same rights, privileges and responsibilities, no matter their genders? Yet, marriage is so much greater than the commitment of two people to each other. Marriage is an institution that much of our culture revolves around. It is also an institution that is in crisis. Divorce rates are at an all time high. Infidelity in marriage is an epidemic. When someone can compete on a television reality show to “Marry a Millionaire”, the argument about saving a sacred institution seems kind of pointless!

There are many things that gay people could do to better their predicament.  They could rally lobbyists or create more interest groups to try and legalize gay marriage.  They could start a revolution against society and spark an all out civil war between liberal and conservative America using gay marriage and other issues to spark the flame.  Heck, they could even establish their own “gay” religion under which they would be guaranteed First Amendment rights of freedom of religion.  The point is gay people aren’t hurting anyone, and more people should follow the motto, “live and let live.”  People are spending more time worrying about other peoples lives than they are their own!  Wake up America!

 Other people, please respond to me and my views!! Thanks!

This entry was posted on 3. February 2009 at 04:57 and is filed under Introduction to Sociology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.