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Andrew Sullivan's Essay: My Big Fat Straight Wedding

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Andrew Sullivan's Essay: My Big Fat Straight Wedding
Monica Manuel
4/24/2013
My Big Fat Straight Wedding hopefully won’t be straight anymore

There is much controversy on the rights of same sex marriage ranging from religious viewpoints to the rights as individuals being able to obtain the same rights as heterosexual couples. In the essay “My Big Fat Straight Wedding” written by Andrew Sullivan, he asks his audience to see the option of gay marriage through the eyes of each person’s own individuality. In his essay, his language, tone, and arguments seem to speak to a specific audience letting them know change is coming and naturally as it should. He gives examples of his own same sex marriage in California and how it made him feel as an individual. Sullivan’s main point was to prove as individuals
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Just because gay culture is now shown on television, or there are now gay soldiers it does not answer the one question he asks which is “Why don’t gay people have their own individual rights to get married?” In providing fun pop culture facts he can relate to a younger more diverse audience but it does not change the fact that marriage is not legal. He also goes on in the essay saying that the gay culture is more common in this era and suggests more people are coming out at younger ages. This reference brings out a counter argument. What about all the areas in the United States and around the world where people cannot come out because it is not accepted where they live? It contradicts his whole argument that our country is going in the right moral direction of accepting gay relationships. Are we being racist or is being gay morally wrong? Sullivan leaves his essay open for a lot of counter arguments because his essay suggests that although gay marriage laws were passed in the state he lives in; but in forty-one other states gay couples still cannot wed. His reference at the end of his essay, suggests that it written in the time period gay marriage was legal in California. Same sex marriages were legal in California; 5 months later Prop 8 was passed and gay marriage was illegal again. At this point where same sex marriages are not legal in California anymore, the author comes off as arrogant and too confident in his thought of America changing its thoughts of homosexuality because it marriage is not possible for the gay community in California

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