Gay Marriage Essay

Submitted By ipsychot
Words: 394
Pages: 2

Tyler Wilkins

Ask just about anyone. They'll all tell you they're in favor of equal rights for homosexuals. Just name the situation, and ask. They'll all say, yes, gays should have the same rights in housing, jobs, public accommodations, and should have equal access to government benefits, equal protection of the law, etcetera, etcetera. Then you get to gay marriage and that's when all this talk of equality stops dead cold.
About half of people in the U.S. support gay marriage, far less than those who are otherwise supportive of legally enforced gay rights (about 75%). This means that many of the same people who are even passionately in favor of gay rights oppose gays on this one issue. Why all the passion? It's because there is a lot of misunderstanding about what homosexuality really is, as well as the false assumption that gay people enjoy the same civil rights protections as everyone else. There are also a lot of stereotypes about gay relationships, and even a great deal of misunderstanding of what marriage itself is all about.
Marriage is an institution between one man and one woman. Well, that's the most often heard argument, one even codified in a recently passed U.S. federal law. Yet it is easily the weakest. Who says who marriage is to be defined by? The married? Isn't that kind of like allowing a banker to decide who is going to own the money in stored in his vaults? It seems to me that if the straight community cannot show a compelling reason to deny the