Gay Marriage

Gay Marriage: Should It Be Legal?
December Winters
PHI 200
Robert Vaughan
September 12, 2011

Even though I am a Christian, and personally would never have a physical relationship with someone of the same sex, I have struggled with the debate on gay marriage. I believe that as human beings, with the same rights as heterosexuals, they should have the same right to marry and start a family. However, as a Christian, I am taught that homosexuality is a sin.   As someone who is married, albeit in a heterosexual relationship, I would have been quite upset if someone prohibited me from marrying my husband for any reason, although interracial marriage was illegal at one point in our history. I am torn on the issue but I feel that something like marriage is a personal decision and that no one else has the right to decide who can marry who. This is, at its core, discrimination and with so many laws to help protect against discrimination I do not believe that gay marriage will remain illegal for long. Gays, as human beings, should have every right that everyone else does but should marriage be included?

Many people view marriage as uniting a man and a woman together because that is the only way that marriage has been viewed in the past. Just a few decades ago people were not open about being gay. It was viewed in a negative light and there were a lot of stereotyping about what it meant to be gay. People who are gay were back then were thought to be promiscuous and that they were unable to form lasting relationships. This of course in recent years has been proven to be false. As it has been more accepted we have come to realize that gay relationships are exactly like that of relationships with opposite sex. Both homosexual and heterosexual relationships both have their promiscuous relationships as well as ones that last a lifetime. Many homosexual couples have actually started families by adoption or in many cases of the females they have in vitro fertilization done.... [continues]

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