Gay Marriage Research Paper

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Gay Marriage
The foundation of the term “marriage” is strictly about love, not gender or sex. Same sex marriage should be legalized because not only is it immoral to prevent loving couples to be legally bound to one another, it is completely unconstitutional. Before one makes his or her opinion on gay marriage, one should keep an open mind and analyze all of the pros before merely writing off the lifestyle of a homosexual. We need to understand that the only change that will occur if homosexuals are legally allowed to marry is that they will receive legal and financial benefits from the government.
The California Chief Justice, Ron George, once said, “Limiting the designation of marriage to a union between man and woman is unconstitutional and must be stricken from the statute.(Messerli)” The point he makes is extremely legitimate because the United States Constitution says, “No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. (U.S. Const. amend. XIV)” When a homosexual person, male or female, is not allowed by the United States of America to marry the person they love due to a problem with gender, the Constitution is not upheld. Clearly, the Constitution states that not only are all men created equal, but they are also required to have “certain unalienable rights.” Every man and woman deserves the right to be allowed to marry the one person he or she loves. The entire purpose of the Constitution is to protect human rights, but when homosexuals are not allowed to marry, human rights are no longer protected (Anderson 176). Statistics have shown that in Massachusetts there is the lowest divorce rate in The United States. Massachusetts reached this position in 2004, the year that gay marriage was legalized. The divorce rate was twenty one percent lower than the previous year (Gay Marriage Pro Con). Clearly, the homosexuals that are getting married are happy together and are not contributing to the divorce rate. As of 2012, gay marriage is legal in nine states. Those states include Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa, Vermont, New Hampshire, New York, Maryland, Maine, and Washington DC (Mucciaroni 214). All of these states have legalized gay marriage at some point since the year 2004. Slowly and surely, Americans have been becoming more open to the idea of gay marriages and civil unions. Polls have proven that there has been a large increase of Americans who believe that same sex marriage should be legal (Mucciaroni 205). In 2006, thirty-six percent of Americans agreed that same sex marriage should be legal, and only six years later, in 2012, fifty-three percent of Americans agree that same sex marriage should be legal (Mucciaroni 206). At this rate, it appears that same sex marriage will be widely accepted and legal in less that twenty years, especially if the government is willing to accept it across the board.
The government unfairly discriminates against gay and lesbian couples. Discrimination is clearly unconstitutional. The government does not allow same sex couples who live together numerous federal and financial benefits. A few of these rights include: Assumption of Spouse’s Pension, Automatic Inheritance, Automatic Housing Lease Transfer, Child Custody, Crime Victim’s recovery Benefits, Bereavement Leave, and Burial Determination. Meanwhile, some employers give homosexuals domestic benefits in their contracts (Mucciaroni 212). There have been many court cases that suggest the fact that discriminating against homosexuals is unconstitutional and unfair. For instance, in the 1967 Supreme Court case “Loving Verses Virginia,” the judge deemed same sex marriage as, “one of the basic rights of man” (Gay Marriage Pro Con). The United States Supreme Court declared
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