Professor Miller
Eng 102
22 November 2012
Marriage is Marriage Others might ask why gay marriage should be legalized, but my question is why should other people be able to choose who marries who? If a man and a woman get married, no one seems to care. They are two people who feel affection for one another and those two people want to start a family. If the scenario was to change a little bit by a man and a man, or a woman and a woman, it causes uproar. They are not allowed to be married or raise a family together. We are equals in this world whether we are Black, White, Hispanic, Indian, or any other race for that matter. People have their own personal reason for not wanting same sex marriages. The overriding questions though are how is this fair to homosexuals who share a love for one another and want to express it through the union marriage? And, why are they being discriminated against when all they want is the same opportunity as everyone else. In a marriage there is one thing that truly matters: love. Yes, other things are important too, but not one couple would make it to even asking someone to marry them if there was no love involved. The definition of love, according to dictionary.com reads “Very strong affection: an intense feeling of tender affection and compassion.” If gay people feel this way then why shouldn’t they be able to be married if they are happy with one another? Homosexual relationships are increasingly gaining acceptance in this country, however, these couples have not been permitted to marry. For example, California, Hawaii, New York, and the District of Columbia all have domestic partnership laws and civil partnerships meaning it is almost a marriage without the matrimony(Lopez 252). Civil partnerships also give couples the ability to have joint bank accounts, live in the same house, and pay bills together. Homosexual couples are not entitled to this in most states. Marriage benefits should be available to all couples, no matter what. In places where gay marriages are banned, the gay couples are not able to have the same benefits as others. When filing for health care or insurance through a job, gay couples are not able to add each other on (Lopez 253). When we are born, we are not able to tell our body the way we want our hormones to develop. Our hormones develop as we grow older. Consider many gay and lesbians you’ve seen. Not always, but many times, secondary sexual characteristics resemble the opposite sex. In other words, homosexual males often have softer voices. Lesbians may have strong cheekbones and a more masculine body shape. It’s all affected by those hormone switches (Schiappa 144). In addition, why would someone choose to be gay? Do people really analyze the situation…”Let’s see, I can be discriminated against, ridiculed by friends, and co-workers, rejected by my family, told I’m going to hell by the church, and subjected to beatings by gay bashers…hmmm. Sign me up! Now, there will be odd cases where people experiment with different types of sex, but you can’t just teach people to be gay or not gay for a lifetime. It is often heard that gay couples are not properly able to raise children and have their own family. It is said that gay couples are not the proper environment to raise children. Murderers, convicted felons of all sorts, even known child molesters are all allowed to freely marry and procreate, and do so every day, with hardly a second thought 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. Lots of 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 (Schiappa 136). The difference has been shown again and again to be insignificant and Psychologists tell us that what makes