Gay Marriage, a legal concept (Philosophy)

Introduction

Same-sex marriage (also called gay marriage) is a legally or socially recognized marriage between two persons of the same biological sex or social gender.

Gay marriage is a civil rights, political, social, moral, and religious issue in many nations. The conflict arises over whether same-sex couples should be allowed to enter into marriage, be forced to use a different status, such as a civil union, which is usually more limited, or not have any such rights. A related issue is whether the term "marriage" should be applied.

Discussion

In recent years, the debate over same-sex marriage has grown from an issue that occasionally arose in a few states to a nationwide controversy. Indeed, in the last five years, the debate over gay marriage has been heard in the halls of the U.K. Congress in dozens of state legislatures and courtrooms. Moreover, the battle over whether gays and lesbians should be allowed to wed shows no signs of abating. In the last year alone, three states have banned same-sex marriage and four states have legalized the practice (Rawls, 12-16). As the debate rages on, the American religious community remains deeply divided over the issue.

Gay & straight liberals say that discrimination is discrimination, that people should be able to marry based upon love & that they support marriage equality, but they throw away all of that talk when it comes to consenting adult polygamous marriage. This shows that gay & straight liberals are bigots (what they accuse others of) & hypocrites as well. They only want marriage to be redefined to allow gay marriage & to destroy the God-given institution of marriage.

The movement to open civil marriage to same-sex couples achieved its first temporary success in 1993 with the decision of the Hawaii Supreme Court that the restriction of marriage to opposite-sex couples would be presumed unconstitutional unless the state could demonstrate that it furthered a compelling state interest. In response to this decision the state constitution was amended to allow the legislature to preserve that restriction. A similar court decision in Alaska in 1998 led to an even stronger constitutional amendment, itself defining marriage as between one man and one woman. In further reaction to the Hawaii case, the federal Defense of Marriage Act (1996) provided that no state would be required to recognize a same-sex marriage from another state, and also defined marriage for federal-law purposes as opposite-sex. The majority of the states also passed their own "marriage protection acts.

Few societies have recognized same-sex unions as marriages, the historical and anthropological record reveals a large range of attitudes towards same-sex unions ranging from praise, to sympathetic toleration, to indifference, to prohibition. Opponents of same-sex marriages have argued that recognition of same-sex marriages would erode religious freedoms, and that same-sex marriage, while doing well for the couples that participate in them and the children they are raising, undermines a right of children to be raised by their biological mother and father(Rawls, 12-16).

A "majority rules" position regards same-sex marriage as void ...