The issue to be discussed is whether or not homosexuals should be allowed to marry one another. The main reason why those in the gay community have called for the right to marry is usually not from a desire to be married as such but because of the desire for 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. For those who are truly serious about the issue, however, what is important is the attempt to secure for homosexual partners rights that are taken for granted by heterosexual married couples, such as the right to inheritance, to insurance benefits, for one partner to visit the other in a hospital, and so on. Society to date has deemed marriage to mean more than this and to have at least the possibility of procreating children, and this idea is used as an argument to deny gays the right to marry one another. Providing greater fairness is the goal. Allowing gay marriage would be one approach. Denying the possibility of gay marriage or of any benefits to gay partners would be another but would not achieve fairness. A median point of view would deny gay marriage but allow some other definition of gay partnership to provide benefits to surviving partners, for instance.
Some in the gay community have taken a lead from the civil rights movement and more and more have asserted themselves as a political force, demanding recognition, respect, and equal treatment under the law. One of the results has been a backlash on the part of many against the gay community, leading to incidents of gay-bashing as well as the passage of laws against the so-called gay lifestyle and against giving gay people civil rights as a group. The picture that much of America has of gays is based largely on media images from urban centers, but this ignores the fact that gay people are found throughout A...