I wrote this piece about a year and a half ago, when gay marriage was first legalized in Massachussets. Now it seems there is an amendment floating around for the MA consitution to amend it to outlaw gay marraige. Let us not forget why this is a terrible debate to be having in the first place:That Is So GaySexual orientation is to modern times as race was to the 1960: a basis for extreme discrimination on both a social and legal plane. How could American law prohibit the marriage of peaceful people? That shouldn’t be a tricky question, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t arguments out there.
The argument I find most is that marriage is defined as a union exclusively between a man and a woman, thus prohibiting a man and a man from marrying. This is called arguing semantics. Nit picking, if you will. Nonetheless, opponents of same sex marriages insist on using this logic to argue their case. Let’s see if the logic follows.
What is a man? To Webster, the undisputed source for the meaning of words, a man is defined as an individual human being. This first definition makes no mention of gender. Since “man” means individual human being, gender undetermined, let’s assume the man in question is, in fact, a female. This would result in the marriage of a man (albeit a female man) and a woman, and thus, by the definition set forth by opponents to same-sex marriage, a union between a female man and a woman is a marriage, by definition.
What about male men? The definition does say a marriage is a union between a man and a woman. But it would be sexual discrimination to say that two female men could marry but two male men couldn’t. Since a same sex marriage should be allowed to one sex, it should be allowed to all sexes, lest we discriminate against one of the two sexes.
I will be the first to admit that this rationalization is quite a stretch. But that’s my point. Making an argument based on semantics (i.e. the dictionary definition of a word) instead of the actual idea behind the word is childish and, quite frankly, seems like a desperate attempt to save an irrational cause.
The First Amendment reads: “Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech…” Consider what a marriage is: a legal declaration of love and commitment between two people. To prohibit such a declaration robs a class of people of this most precious Constitutional Right. The reason this Amendment exists is to forbid the creation of second-class citizens. By not being able to marry, same-sex couples are robbed of a sacred and time-honored institution, and therefore treated as second-class citizens.
As for the morality of same-sex marriages (i.e. the morality of homosexuality), this is a debate that will always be fueled by conservative religious beliefs and ignorant misconceptions (two separate, distinct categories to be sure). That said, I am not trying to convince anyone of the morality of homosexuality or even same-sex marriages. Regardless of their morality, they should not be legally prohibited; in fact, they should be legally protected and recognized just as a traditional marriage is. Just as government-sponsored racism ended in the middle of the last century, so must government-sponsored sexual orientation-ism, that is, laws and regulations restricting basic freedoms based on sexual orientation.
Moderates in the 1960s were wary of integration of schools and other pro-civil rights actions, just as moderates are wary of totally legitimizing same-sex marriages. This is sad, because just as civil rights are important for people of all races, they are important for people of different sexual orientations. Just as racism was dramatically legislated against in the 1960s, so should discrimination against sexual orientation be legislated against today. That is to say, a law prohibiting the discrimination of who can and cannot marry whom should be passed in every state in the name of civil rights.
