Issue of Gay Marriage

The issue to be discussed is whether or not homosexuals should be allowed to marry one another. There are a number of rationales that have been offered by those in the gay community as to why they should be allowed to marry, and generally the impetus has come not from a desire to be married as such but as a result of various social and economic benefits denied to gay people because they cannot marry. For some in the gay community, demands for gay marriage may in fact be a form of challenge to the "straight" community, but those who are truly serious about the issue are attempting to secure for homosexual partners such rights taken for granted by heterosexual married couples as the right to inheritance, to insurance benefits, for one partner to visit the other in a hospital, and so on. Society has so far deemed marriage to mean more than this and to have at least the possibility of procreating children, and this idea, sometimes but not necessarily touted as a demonstration of dedication to family or so-called "family values," is used as an argument to deny gays the right to marry one another.

Tensions between the gay and straight cultures of America have been noted by sociologists and the news media for some time. The gay community has taken a lead from the civil rights movement and more and more has asserted itself as a political force, demanding recognition, respect, and equal treatment under the law. One of the results, probably a predictable result, has

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uld aggressively seek full legal recognition for same-sex marriages. Stoddard notes some of the history of the issue and the fact that in the 1970s, same-sex couples in Minnesota, Kentucky, and Washington brought constitutional challenges to the marriage status and failed. The court offered two basic justifications for limiting marriage to male-female couples in all cases--history and procreation. No American jurisdiction as yet recognizes the right of two women or two men to marry one another, though several nations in northern Europe do. Stoddard wants the issue put in the forefront even tough he is convinced that it will lose. He offers his rationale for this decision when he states, Marriage is much more than a relationship sanctioned by law. It is the centerpiece of our entire social structure, the core of the traditional notion of "family." Even in its present tarnished state, the marital relationship inspires sentiments suggesting that it is something almost suprahuman. . . Lesbians and gay men are now denied entry to this "noble" and "sacred" institution. The implicit message is this: two men or two women are incapable of achieving such an exalted domestic state. Gay relationships are somehow less significant,

Category: Psychology - I