Gay and Lesbian Marriages

Background for discourse of same-sex marriage can be dated from 1969, the year of the now-famous Stonewall riot in New York City, which fostered a generation of social activism and group advocacy on the part of homosexuals. Massachusetts US Representative Barney Frank, a self-identified homosexual, has been quoted on the issue in this way: "I don't understand how it hurts anybody else if two people want to be legally . . . responsible for each other" (Pearcey & Colson, 1996, p. 104). Pearcey and Colson, who oppose homosexual marriage chiefly on religious grounds, note that private acceptance of homosexuals "is not the same thing as normalizing homosexuality by granting homosexuals a legal right to the public institution of marriage" (p. 104). Arguments for and against same-sex marriage made on religious grounds alone appear to be irreconcilable. Accordingly, the focus herein is on civil marriage.

Arguments against homosexual marriage cite cross-cultural historical universality of marriage as an organizing principle of social and personal companionship, procreation, sexual activity, care, education, and inheritance rights of c

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al reinforcement accorded by marriage" (Barillas, 2001). But such high-profile breakups and property litigation of longtime companions Jennifer Levinson and Kathy Levinson (Terms, 2001), known as activist promoters of gay marriage in California, do not argue the stability of same-sex marriage. Further, citing same-sex marriage advocacy as a species of dominant-culture pressure for social conformity, one self-identified lesbian (Gomez, 2000) argues that loving relationships do not require the artificiality of marriage. The arguments favoring same-sex marriage as an institution of civil and religious life begin with analysis of the mutability of the institution through the ages and the relegation of second-class rights status to an entire group of people based on sexual orientation. Sullivan explains that marriage, like other socially constructed institutions, "has undergone vast changes over the last two millennia." He continues: If marriage were the same today as it has been for 2,000 years, it would be possible to marry a twelve-year-old you had never met, to own a wife as property and dispose of her at will, or to imprison a person who married someone of a different race. And it would be impossible to get a divorce (Sullivan,
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Approximate Word count = 1453
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

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