As rights
go, marriage is not one that we often have to think about not having. We are
raised in a society where we just assume that our children will one day grow up
to find the man or woman of their dreams and marry them with no form of
complication involved. Now for a moment, just wonder about the possibility that
your child is gay, with best-case scenario, they will live a very happy and
normal life and will be accepted in all walks of life. Adding the detail that
you live in Texas, a state where gay marriage is illegal, would you find it
just that your child might not marry the man or woman of his or her choosing? Issues
such as this are what are currently being dealt with here in the United States
as well as other countries throughout the world.
Currently
only seven states allow gay marriage and eleven allow civil unions between same
sex partners but thirty-one states have a complete ban on same sex marriage.
The only state in America with no laws banning or promoting same sex marriage
in any way is New Mexico. The state of California is currently trying to over
turn something called Proposition Eight. According to purple unions people
are angry about gay marriage and find that there have been cases in which our
government had to find a way to allow for gay marriage to proceed. The website
also stated that…
“Nine years ago, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy,
who may soon decide the fate of same-sex marriage in California, pondered the
case of two Texas men who had been arrested in an apartment at gunpoint and
charged with sodomy. Seventeen years earlier, and two years before President
Ronald Reagan appointed Kennedy to the court, the justices had upheld a law
against gay sex in Georgia. One member of the majority, Chief Justice Warren
Burger, wrote that the court would have to “cast aside millennia of moral
teaching” to find that “homosexual sodomy is somehow protected as a fundamental
right.”
Often
in these situations, moral and religious conflicts get in the way of resolving
the issue. Our government constantly has to keep re-weighing the scales of just
how much religion can impact our constitutional rights; what ever happened to
separation of church and state? Our country has a tendency to bend the rules a
bit due to where the issue is geographically. Depending on the state, our individual state governments will conclude to different results when faced with the same religion versus gay marriage standoff. Religion is something that in
engrained in us from childhood and we carry with us through life; just because
someone has a political position where they must make important decisions,
doesn’t mean that they will put all of their personal beliefs and morals aside
when making such decisions. The Pew Forum, a project of the Pew research
center, posted an article recently on percentages of people who are opposed and
pro same sex marriage depending on their personal religion. The article stated
that “Among religious groups,
white evangelical Protestants express the greatest opposition to same-sex
marriage, with 74% saying they oppose allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry
legally.” The article goes on to talk
about how 54% of black Protestants oppose to gay marriage. Having that although
the two groups differ in skin color, they share the same religion, so I find
myself contemplating why there is such a large difference in percentages. For Harriet,
a website that celebrates black heritage, posted an article about a year ago
that talked about how African-American people relate to the gay rights
movement. The article would often be upset with black culture and their views
on same sex marriage. Did you know that the recent defeat of same-sex marriage
legislation in Maryland was largely due to the black church’s opposition toward
it? The article continues with talking about a study saying,
“A recent study revealed that 64 percent of black people find homosexuality
to be immoral. That statistic is not surprising when we consider the fact that
most black Americans consider themselves to be Christians and the church's
stance against homosexuality is well documented. But many of us have forgotten
that the very same Bible that we often use to justify our prejudice against gay
people was once used to justify our enslavement! Where is our sense of history?”
Now
I’ve slightly addressed these three main issues against gay marriage, race,
religion and government; but I’ve only begun to grace the surface. The three
put together do make quite a difficult trifecta but individually, all three
have their own poison to add to the mix of discrimination. Lets begin with
religion. The issue of religion versus the gay rights movement is the largest
of the three. The Christian opposition toward same sex marriage goes much
deeper than you or I may think. According to the book The Lesbian and Gay
Movement: Assimilation or Liberation? By Craig A. Rimmerman, “ A consistent
argument offered by the Christian Right… is that children raised by lesbian or
gay parents will be injured or abused in some way.” this statement led to
things such as the Boston Globe putting out a full page advertisement in 2004
saying
“Same-sex
marriage advocates and the Massachusetts supreme court are asking our state and
nation to enter a massive, untested social experiment with coming generations
of children. We must ask one simple question: is the same-sex “family” good for
children?”
Views
such as these are what make up the outer layers of the argument; the little pieces
that must be resolved to eventually help break down the barriers between
homosexuals in America and the ever bliss of marriage. It is unfathomable to me how someone can come up with a statistic that
children living with same-sex parents are more likely to be subject to abuse. There
is no logical evidence of such statistic! By making a statement like that, the Christian
right ignores a “large body of social science research that confirms that
children raised by gay or lesbian parents are not disadvantaged relative to
their peers” (Rimmerman 124). The Christian right, as well as many other religions affiliations, will
often propose things such as these and then once proven to be wrong, will
search their brain for another reason why its wrong; and there’s nothing wrong
with that. Religion often invokes a sense of constant following in us; were
told something is wrong and so it must be wrong, its just another way of
thinking that, although may result in things such as anti-gay rights movements,
to them is perfectly fine. The role religion plays in
the gay-rights movement is so large that it’s almost impossible to talk about
anti-gay slander without bringing god into the conversation.
It may not hold as large of a place in the issue as
religion does, but the government definitely holds a more important place. The
government is ultimately who decides, in a way, weather or not gay marriage
should be legalized in each state. A major effort in same-sex marriage in
California was to overturn Proposition Eight. Proposition Eight was proposed in
2008 for California. The purpose of the bill was to make gay marriage illegal
in the state of California. The bill initially passed but the people of
California are proposed to have it overturned by the Supreme Court. According
to The Huffington Post “Same-sex
marriage moved one step closer to the Supreme Court on Tuesday [2/7/12] when a
federal appeals court ruled California's ban unconstitutional, saying it serves
no purpose other than to "lessen the status and human dignity" of
gays.” As
fantastic as this is, the news of how the court referred to the ban is a bit
concerning. To say that the purpose of the bill was to “lessen the status and
human dignity of gays” makes me think about all of the other states that have a
ban on same sex marriage and wonder why if it “lessens the status and human dignity”
in California, why is that not so of states like Texas, Idaho, Florida,
Delaware, and so many others. The
government also posses some obstacles that gay and lesbian Americans can only
seldom overcome. The book Gay and Lesbian Issues by Chuck Stewart
addresses the issue of how after the attacks on September eleventh 2001, the
United States government set up the September 11 Victims Compensation Fund. The
purpose of the fund was to give up to $1 million to each family with a member
who had died in the attacks, but what constituted of a family? Many people
began to question if gay and lesbian families would receive such compensation. The
book goes on to state how “Eventually, some gay and lesbian survivors got
compensation, while others did not.” to me that is the definition of an unjust
government.
In
my own opinion, same sex marriage should be legal. While there is no clear
solution to the issue now, all I can say is that there is no moral reason why
two people that love each other shouldn’t be allowed to marry one another. I
could go on and on about how I believe this is true, but ultimately the fate of
the gay rights movement rests in the hands of all American citizens to
individually decide what they believe is right. The individual opinions of American
citizens are what define our country and are what will show the rest of the
world what kind of people we truly are. The future only holds what may come but
I can only hope that people will one day learn to appreciate one another and
understand that although you might not agree with what someone else does, it
could be ultimately good in the end to try to understand instead of slander.
Rimmerman, C. A. (2008). The Lesbian and Gay Movement: Assimilation
or Liberation. Colorado: Westview Press
Stewart, C. (2003). Gay and Lesbian Issues. California: ABC-CLIO, inc
