Should Gay Marriage Be Legal? 6 Pros and Cons

Contents:

• GAY MARRIAGE
• THE END OF GAYS: GAY MARRIAGE AND THE DECLE OF THE HOMOSEXUAL POPULATN
• STOP GAY MARRIAGESTOP GAY MARRIAGE
• SHOULD GAY MARRIAGE BE LEGAL?
• “GAY MARRIAGE” AS A SIGN OF THE END TIM
• GAY MARRIAGE, OTHER RIGHTS AT RISK AFTER U.S. SUPREME COURT ABORTN MOVE
• END OF ROE THREATENS GAY MARRIAGE, BIRTH CONTROL ACCS: THE 14TH AMENDMENT, EXPLAED
• MAJORY OF AMERINS BELIEVE THE SUPREME COURT WILL LIM GAY MARRIAGE AFTER OVERTURNG ROE V. WA: POLL
• MANY BRONS HAVE CHANGED THEIR MDS ON GAY MARRIAGE

GAY MARRIAGE

Early Years: Same-Sex Marriage Bans In 1970, jt one year after the historic Stonewall Rts that galvanized the gay rights movement, law stunt Richard Baker and librarian Jam McConnell applied for a marriage license Gerald Nelson rejected their applitn bee they were a same-sex uple, and a trial urt upheld his cisn.

THE END OF GAYS: GAY MARRIAGE AND THE DECLE OF THE HOMOSEXUAL POPULATN

” This lg effectively blocked feral urts om lg on same-sex marriage for s, leavg the cisn solely the hands of stat, which alt blow after blow to those hopg to see gay marriage beg 1973, for stance, Maryland beme the first state to create a law that explicly f marriage as a unn between a man and woman, a belief held by many nservative relig groups. Though the gay rights movement saw some advancements the 1970s and 1980s—such as Harvey Milk beg the first openly gay man elected to public office the untry 1977—the fight for gay marriage ma ltle headway for many years. In 1989, the San Francis Board of Supervisors passed an ordance that allowed homosexual upl and unmarried heterosexual upl to register for domtic partnerships, which granted hospal visatn rights and other years later, the District of Columbia siarly passed a new law that allowed same-sex upl to register as domtic partners.

C., 1993, the hight urt Hawaii led that a ban on same-sex marriage may vlate that state nstutn’s Equal Protectn Clse—the first time a state urt has ever ched toward makg gay marriage Hawaii Supreme Court sent the se—brought by a gay male uple and two lbian upl who were nied marriage licens 1990—back for further review to the lower First Circu Court, which 1991 origally dismissed the the state tried to prove that there was “pellg state tert” jtifyg the ban, the se would be tied up ligatn for the next three Defense of Marriage Act Opponents of gay marriage, however, did not s on their hnch. Congrs 1996 passed the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which Print Bill Clton signed to didn’t ban gay marriage outright but specified that only heterosexual upl uld be granted feral marriage benefs.

That is, even if a state ma gay marriage legal, same-sex upl still wouldn’t be able to file e tax jotly, sponsor spo for immigratn benefs or receive spoal Social Secury payments, among many other act was a huge setback for the marriage equaly movement, but transient good news arose three months later: Hawaii Judge Kev S. Phg for Change: Civil Unns The next saw a whirlwd of activy on the gay marriage ont, begng wh the year 2000 when Vermont beme the first state to legalize civil unns, a legal stat that provis most of the state-level benefs of years later, Massachetts beme the first state to legalize gay marriage when the Massachetts Supreme Court led that same-sex upl had the right to marry Goodridge v. 2004 was notable for upl many other stat as well, though for the oppose reason: Ten typilly nservative stat, along wh Oregon, enacted state-level bans on gay marriage.

STOP GAY MARRIAGESTOP GAY MARRIAGE

Kansas and Texas were next 2005, and 2006 saw seven more stat passg Constutnal amendments agast gay towards the end of the , gay marriage beme legal var stat, cludg Connecticut, Iowa, Vermont (the first state to approve by legislative means) and New Hampshire.

SHOULD GAY MARRIAGE BE LEGAL?

Domtic Partnerships Throughout the and the begng of the next, California equently ma headl for seawg on the gay marriage state was the first to pass a domtic partnership statute 1999, and legislators tried to pass a same-sex marriage bill 2005 and 2007. For the first time the untry’s history, voters (rather than judg or legislators) Mae, Maryland, and Washgton approved Constutnal amendments permtg same-sex marriage marriage also beme a feral issue 2010, Massachetts, the first state to legalize gay marriage, found Sectn 3 of DOMA—the part of the 1996 law that fed marriage as a unn between one man and one woman—to be unnstutnal.

“GAY MARRIAGE” AS A SIGN OF THE END TIM

Wdsor, nservative Jtice Anthony Kennedy sid wh Jtic Ruth Bar Gsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan favor of same-sex marriage rights, ultimately makg gay marriage legal across the natn June this time, was still outlawed only 13 stat, and more than 20 other untri had already legalized gay marriage, startg wh the Netherlands December 2000. Yet this is precisely what I predict will happen over the very long urse of natural selectn should the societal-level normalizatn of adult homosexual relatnships, such as is happeng currently wh the triumphant legalizatn of gay marriage my new home state of New York, ntu happily on s way. ) Not so very long ago, the ncept of “gay marriage” was so far om beg a legal possibily s leral sense that most listeners would have probably terpreted this phrase to mean a closeted gay man married to a woman, or a lbian to a man.

GAY MARRIAGE, OTHER RIGHTS AT RISK AFTER U.S. SUPREME COURT ABORTN MOVE

In one extensive study 1978, for example, rearchers Alan Bell and Mart Weberg, factorg ethnic differenc, found that 35 percent of gay whe mal, and 13 percent of gay black mal, reported havg been married to a woman.

And Bell and Weberg’s figur almost certaly unrreport the actual equency of such relatnships, too, sce their data e om surveys of sexual orientatn llected durg an unapologetilly homophobic era. In other words, the statistics only take to acunt those dividuals prevly or currently a mixed-orientatn marriage willg to acknowledge their primary homosexual leangs. ) Still, many studi have sce examed the psychologil experienc of those who acknowledge beg mixed-orientatn marriag—cludg motivatns to enter to such a marriage to beg wh, ternalized homophobia, self-awarens and acceptance, relig iology, experimentg wh open relatnships, and so on—om the perspective of the homosexual as well as om that of the heterosexual spoe.

One tertg sex difference, reported 1985 by Universy of Mnota psychologist Eli Coleman, is that lbians tend to marry men at younger ag (mean age of 21) than did gay men marryg women (mean age of 24). Lbians also reported beg ls aware than gay men of their own homosexual orientatn upon enterg such ill-ftg marriag and a slower realizatn of their same-sex attractns.

END OF ROE THREATENS GAY MARRIAGE, BIRTH CONTROL ACCS: THE 14TH AMENDMENT, EXPLAED

And for our purpos, the most relevant fdgs for the qutn we started off wh—which is whether the creasg public support for gay marriage will lead, ironilly, to the eventual cle of the homosexual populatn—is the fact that most homosexuals mixed-orientatn marriag have had at least one child wh their spoe. Although the precise geic mechanisms unrlyg homosexualy are still relatively unknown, we do know that, however the mechanisms actually work, there are ed clear, ntributg geic factors unrlyg homosexual orientatn.

The bt evince that homosexualy ns fai as a herable blogil tra om 1990s-era tw studi, which revealed that the nrdance rate (the rate by which tw members overlap on anythg om schizophrenia to creativy to sexual orientatn) for homosexualy is signifintly greater monozygotic tws (intil) than dizygotic tws (who share only half of their gen, jt like non-tw siblgs). The more rigoroly ntrolled tw studi adjt for possible shared environmental fluenc by takg to acunt, for stance, the sexual orientatn of non-tw siblgs or tws separated at birth, and yet all reveal that homosexualy is at least partially herable. Homosexualy is often prented as an evolutnary “mystery” bee of the obv reproductive disadvantag, and th for s rearchers have sought some adaptive functn for the culturally recurrent percentage (anywhere om 1 to 10 percent of the populatn, pendg on the measur ed) of the human populatn that is aroed more by the same than is by the oppose sex.

Yet if we nsir the historil, and perhaps even the anctral, percentage of the homosexual populatn that did fact reproduce bee of societal proscriptns agast adult relatns wh the same sex, the mystery be nsirably ls profound. Even societi where homosexualy was tolerated, such as Ancient Greece, men tend to engage perasty wh adolcent boys while matag wiv and fai at home—romantic relatnships wh fellow adults were by ntrast nsired reprehensible. For gay men, a healthy imagatn ( what I’ve discsed before this lumn terms of erotic mental reprentatn) would be all that is need to transform one’s md a female vaga to one’s favore male an or mouth.

MAJORY OF AMERINS BELIEVE THE SUPREME COURT WILL LIM GAY MARRIAGE AFTER OVERTURNG ROE V. WA: POLL

If zoophil n ejaculate to their wiv only by imagg that their spoe’s vaga is actually a horse’s vulva, a man’s an mt certaly be wh md’s reach of the average married homosexual.

Whatever allel are associated wh homosexual orientatn are transmted by the fx heterosexual means, and this is an age-old reproductive cycle that has been occurrg for as long as adult homosexualy has been proscribed by human societi—and by all acunts, such proscriptn has been the speci’ norm. The cultural velopments are signifint for the homosexual populatn, not only for the obv sake of gag equaly and protectn agast persecutn for an unalterable phenotypic tra, but bee means that the age-old reproductive cycle that has been so central to mixed-orientatn marriag is slowly but surely breakg. This is not to say that lbians and gay men who are now ee to marry the same sex will no longer reproduce—many do, and this trend will ntue wh the advent of new reproductive technologi and creasg societal support (such as surrogacy) for those who sire their own blogil children.

But wh the societal expectatn for men and women to bear children unr the roofs of tradnal oppose-sex relatnships obvly lseng, bed wh the hefty fancial sts of reproductive technologi, as well as the stly terpersonal plexi of arrangements such as surrogacy, not to mentn the fact that homosexual activy among same-sex married upl nnot possibly lead to unplanned pregnanci, homosexual reproductn will clearly cle as same-sex marriag ntue to rise. In an evolvg culture of tolerance and wh the available optn of gay marriage, “g out the closet” will occur at younger and younger ag, and fewer young people will therefore feel strong-armed by shame and obligatn to enter to mixed-orientatn marriag to beg wh.

MANY BRONS HAVE CHANGED THEIR MDS ON GAY MARRIAGE

Addnally, wh this creasg societal acceptance of homosexualy, and as a way to circumvent the often surmountable sts associated wh alternative reproductive technologi (at least for gay men) I spect that gay married upl will beg adoptg children wh creasg equency through the support of state-sponsored equaly iativ, effectively puttg a full stop to the transmissn of their gen. In fact, the prosocial cultural velopments may have nsequenc not only for the reproductive rat of homosexuals, but also for their heterosexual relativ who rry homosexual allel. For example, fdgs om a 2008 study by Brendan Zietsch and his lleagu of the Queensland Instute of Medil Rearch revealed that the blogil relativ of homosexuals (and therefore those that posss allel lked to homosexualy, but who are themselv heterosexual) are at a reproductive advantage over those whout homosexual relativ.

Zietsch and his lleagu argue, sentially, that while too many or too potent homosexual allel may rult full-blown homosexualy—which, all else beg equal—is disadvantageo to reproductive succs, the same allel a heterosexual relative tend to lead to that person havg more lifetime sexual partners and th greater reproductive succs.

The logic here is that sex-atypil tras (for example, men who sre more like femal kdns, empathy, and sensivy, or women who, like men, are more willg to engage unmted sexual relatns) are good but not perfect dic of homosexual orientatn, and when they do occur heterosexual dividuals, they make the people more attractive and or terpersonally appealg to the oppose sex.