Why Same Sex Couples Should Be Allowed To Legally Marry

Why Same Sex Couples Should be Allowed to Legally Marry

All men were created equal. It is for this reason that gays have the same rights when it comes to housing, jobs, protection under the law, and so on, despite their difference in sexual preference. Well then, if gays have the same rights as heterosexual men and women, why can they not be legally married in the U.S? That is the question that half our country should be asking themselves, since 50% of U.S citizens oppose gay marriage. However, extraordinarily, 75% of the people in the U.S are all for gay rights (Bidstrup). But, when it comes to marriage, for one reason or another, the line is drawn. Gay relationships are the same as straight relationships in all aspects except for the fact that they involve two members of the same gender. Both participants in gay relationships are loyal to their significant others, have strong family lives, are committed to their communities, and follow the law. Gay marriage should be legal in the U.S due to the simple, but often ignored, fact that homosexuality is more about being in love and showing affection towards one another as it is about sex. As is the case with heterosexuals, sex is just a way of gays to show their significant others that they do indeed love each other. Despite many people's opinions that gay sex is disgusting, homosexuality is part of a gay's identity. It's impossible to ask a homosexual to change his sexual preference just because some ignorant people disagree with the way they live out their life. There are an endless number of reasons that gay sex should be legalized in the U.S. In actuality, many of the reasons that people oppose gay marriage are unreasonable and unrealistic.

Many feel that marriage is a heterosexual institution (Bidstrup). Their idea is that it takes one man and one woman to be legally wed. Though it may say this in the bible, religious freedoms in the U.S should allow people to choose to marry as they wish. Our nation is built on the foundation that everyone has equal rights. People are both morally and legally permitted to marry interracially. For what just cause could there possibly be for homosexuals to be forbidden to marry. Peoples' prejudices interfere with the idea of gay marriage, an institution that wouldn't harm anyone. While it can definitely be argued that raising children in the environment created between homosexuals can potentially interfere with people's sexual preferences, the most logical way of thinking would be that it's no ones right to decide which sexual preference is the norm. Since it's no body's right to tell a person what food to purchase or clothing to wear in a public setting, it is just as easily no one's right to force anyone to marry in either direction. Whether one is gay or straight should, by right, be no one else's business. Unfortunately, in the real world the majority of the public strongly opposes gay marriage due to the misleading idea that marriage is a heterosexual institution. Whether or not it's morally correct to raise a child as two same sex parents, and risk the alteration into straight adulthood in this world that is very much tilted in that direction is irrelevant. It is my opinion that children should not be raised by gay parents in today's world. However, my reasoning differs from that which also leads me to believe that gay men and woman should be allowed to legally wed. Marriage is a staple in a relationship that occurs after two people love one another strongly enough to last throughout the rest of their lives. There should be no set standard or law that forbids any two people in entering into marriage, regardless of their sexual preference.

Members of our society fear that gay marriage has never been attempted in the U.S and that it will threaten the way we live our lives. However, in Denmark, gay marriage has been legal since 1989 (Bidstrup). Although these rights did not originally come along with the rights to adopt and be married in church, amendments have recently been added to accommodate homosexuals in this capacity. When the Danish voted on the law to allow for gay marriage, 72% of the clergy voted against passing it. Once it was passed regardless, the same clergy willingly admitted that gay marriage has been beneficial to society and agree on its existence. A survey in 1995 found that 89% of the clergy changed their opinion on the law (Bidstrup). They reported that suicide rates decreased, as did the transmission of sexually transmitted diseases. Though many churches fear that gay marriage will lead to the end of Western Civilization, such an irrational conclusion must be rejected by society as a whole. Denmark was made a better nation with the addition of gay marriage, and prohibition should be ended in the U.S.

From a legal standpoint, there are many who oppose gay marriage on the basis that sodomy has been prohibited in the U.S for years. However, these laws only existed as a direct result of the conservative republican politicians who have been unable to shed their homophobic tendencies. Over time, sodomy laws have very rarely been enforced. This has been due to the sheer stupidity of such laws. The only actual purposes of these laws were to exist as discriminatory tools to be utilized by a homophobic society, unwilling to waver in its ways. In the recent U.S Supreme Court vs. Texas decision, the final sodomy laws were dismantled (Bidstrup). Regardless, after years of senseless justification, society still continues to deem gay marriage unacceptable on a count of sodomy. Such an idea is impractical, and should be rejected in the legalization of gay marriage.

As the case with various arguments, there are all whom will take the "slippery slope" argument approach in their reasoning for the banning of gay marriage. A "slippery slope" argument is a point in which one thing happening will lead to another thing happening, triggering a domino effect of negative consequences from one single action. In this case, the argument at hand would be that along with the legalization of gay marriage comes the allowing of bestial marriage, polygamy, and many other wrongs (Bidstrup). This tactic of scaring people of accepting the beneficial consequences of one rational decision is absurd. In countries where gay marriage is legal, there has been no talk of any such changes or disgusting tendencies. In many Scandinavian countries where same sex marriages are allowed, society has remained sound (Bidstrup). If anything, marriages between criminals and those who lack morals would lead towards the anarchy that would occur with bestial marriages and polygamy. Those who have homosexual preferences do not share any of the same moral defects as do the criminals that can wed freely.

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