Gay Marriage

Gay Marriage

One of the corner stones of American society is the pursuit of equality and freedom for all its citizens. A persons sexual preference is his/her own business and if he/she wants to be married then he/she should be allowed to. Gay marriage should be allowed because if the two people love each other and feel devoted to one another then they should reap the benefits of a married couple no matter what their sexual preference may be.

It doesn't matter if a person is gay, that person should have the same rights as any other person in our society today. It would be wrong of us as a society to deny people the right to be married because of their sexual preference. When the government denies this right to the gay couple, they not only deny the marriage but all the benefits that come with the marriage. There are people that not only believe gay marriage is going in the wrong direction for our country but causing problems as well, "Gay marriage is the final step down a long road America has already traveled deinstitutionalizing, denuding and

privatizing marriage" (Sullivan). Yes, marriage has become somewhat of a joke seeing as though there is a 50% chance of divorce with your first marriage (divorce stats). If marriage is like this already with only heterosexual marriages, it is obvious that it is not the gay populations fault. Some may argue that it will get worse but who cares if it does it is their right to marry someone they love. As long as it is two autonomous and consenting adults then they should be allowed to marry. For a country that was founded on freedom, and demanded to give equal rights to all U.S. citizens, our society and government has a poor way of showing it. Same sex couples are being denied the same rights that other Americans receive due to their sexual preference. I personally don't see why gay marriage is looked down upon so much, a same sex marriage between two people has no effect on me and if they are not hurting anyone then it should be allowed. Does that seem like equal rights?

Religion has also played a definitive role in our constitution and legal system. There are many controversies over taking God out of the pledge of a allegiance and also the removal of religious statues from federal buildings, so why not argue to take religion out of all of our laws?

Abortion is still legal, but is under fire because of strong religious groups that believe it is murder. For example a girl gets raped and wants an abortion if the religious group had it their way, the girl would have no choice but to keep the baby (pavone). Similar to anti abortion advocates there are also many anti-gay advocates that use religion as a basis for argument. One of the things holding same-sex marriage back is the religious belief of it being wrong Raspberry). Religion has no place in our law books because not everyone agrees on all the major issues regarding religious laws. Yes, some religious beliefs on killing for example have close to the same views as our laws, but we as a society need to separate the religion from the laws so that our laws are not prejudice against someone who doesn't believe in religion or has different religious beliefs.

What about children from heterosexual relationships where one parent homosexual or where both parents are homosexual, are they messed up? The effects of gay marriage on children have been shown to have no effect, meaning the children come out completely