Gay Marriage: The Issue Is Rpect | Human Rights Watch

Contents:

• GAY MARRIAGE: THE ISSUE IS RPECT
• ARE GAY MARRIAG ANIMPORTANT CIVIL RIGHT TO YOU?
• GAY MARRIAGE AS A BASIC HUMAN RIGHT
• SHOULD GAY MARRIAGE BE LEGAL?
• GAY RIGHTS
• TEN REASONS TO SUPPORT GAY MARRIAGE

GAY MARRIAGE: THE ISSUE IS RPECT

And Febary, the High Court the Uned Kgdom barred a uple om beg foster parents bee their anti-gay views were held to be potentially harmful to the children who would be their re. In fact, rearch shows that children wh gay parents are jt as likely to be well-adjted as children wh straight parents, and that the key to childhood adjtment is good relatnships between parents and children and between the parents themselv.

Straightforward applitn of ternatnal protectns agast unequal treatment dictate that gay and lbian upl, no ls than heterosexual upl, should enjoy the right: there is no civil marriage “exceptn” to the reach of ternatnal anti-discrimatn law. Human Rights Commtee, which monors pliance wh and adjudit vlatns unr the ICCPR, found that laws punishg nsensual, adult homosexual nduct vlate protectns agast discrimatn the ICCPR.

A number of important urt cisns based on this provisn have affirmed the rights of gay and lbian upl to equaly spoal benefs, adoptn and childre, and immigratn rights for foreign partners. The Constutnal Court of South Ai has held that “the fay and fay life wh gays and lbians are pable of tablishg � are all signifint rpects distguishable om those of spo, and human terms as important to gay and lbian same-sex partners as they are to spo.

ARE GAY MARRIAG ANIMPORTANT CIVIL RIGHT TO YOU?

In suatns where publicly affirmg one’s homosexualy n lead to discrimatn or vlence--where one may lose one’s job or home whout legal redrs--the burn imposed is not only discrimatory, but dangero.

Intersex people (those born wh atypil sex characteristics) suffer some of the same kds of human rights vlatns as lbian, gay, bisexual and transgenr, people. California Supreme Court Chief Jtice Ronald Gee, the May 15, 2008 cisn, wrg for the majory, ced the 1948 cisn which reversed California's ban on terracial marriag, to support gay marriag.

We therefore nclu that view of the substance and signifince of the fundamental nstutnal right to form a fay relatnship, the California Constutn properly mt be terpreted to guarantee this basic civil right to all Californians, whether gay or heterosexual, and to same-sex upl as well as to oppose-sex upl. I am still not a polil person, but I am proud that Richard's and my name is on a urt se that n help rerce the love, the mment, the fairns, and the fay that so many people, black or whe, young or old, gay or straight seek life. Opn|Gay Marriage as a Basic Human Right ADVERTISEMENTMay 3, 1996See the article s origal ntext om May 3, 1996, Sectn A, Page 30Buy ReprtsTimMache is an exclive benef for home livery and digal the ArchiveThis is a digized versn of an article om The Tim’s prt archive, before the start of onle publitn 1996.

GAY MARRIAGE AS A BASIC HUMAN RIGHT

His ma argument agast seems to be that gay marriage mak him feel unfortable -- a terrible reason to ny a class of people a basic human mak a mon yet spur leap of logic when he argu that extendg marriage to same-sex upl would somehow weaken the tradnal fay. If heterosexual marriage is the preferred "fay" un for raisg children and buildg stable liv, don't stand to reason that allowg gay upl to marry would enhance fai, tradnal or otherwise, wh or whout children?

" Surely he knows that gay parents have no more abily to make their children gay than straight parents have to make theirs Safire is rrect when he says gay men and lbians want more than "toleratn. What we really want is equal protectn unr the law and to be judged for who we are as high-pched rhetoric the bate over gay marriage is clear proof that we have yet to reach those goals. US public opn had shifted signifintly over the years, om 27% approval of gay marriage 1996 to 55% 2015, the year beme legal throughout the Uned Stat, to 61% 2019.

Proponents of legal gay marriage ntend that gay marriage bans are discrimatory and unnstutnal, and that same-sex upl should have accs to all the benefs enjoyed by different-sex upl. On July 25, 2014 Miami-Da County Circu Court Judge Sarah Zabel led Florida’s gay marriage ban unnstutnal and stated that the ban “serv only to hurt, to discrimate, to prive same-sex upl and their fai of equal digny, to label and treat them as send-class cizens, and to em them unworthy of participatn one of the fundamental stutns of our society.

SHOULD GAY MARRIAGE BE LEGAL?

The Amerin Psychologil Associatn, Amerin Psychiatric Associatn, and others nclud that legal gay marriage giv upl “accs to the social support that already facilat and strengthens heterosexual marriag, wh all of the psychologil and physil health benefs associated wh that support. A 2010 analysis found that after their stat had banned gay marriage, gay, lbian and bisexual people suffered a 37% crease mood disorrs, a 42% crease alhol-e disorrs, and a 248% crease generalized anxiety disorrs.

In July 2012 New York Cy Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that gay marriage had ntributed $259 ln to the cy’s enomy jt a year sce the practice beme legal there July 2011.

In 2012, the Williams Instute at the Universy of California at Los Angel (UCLA) found that the first five years after Massachetts legalized gay marriage 2004, same-sex weddg expendur (such as venue rental, weddg k, etc.

GAY RIGHTS

2016 printial ndidate and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fra stated that civil unns are aquate as an equivalent to marriage: “Benefs are beg btowed to gay upl [ civil unns]… I believe we need to rpect those who believe that the word marriage has a spirual foundatn… Why n’t we rpect and tolerate that while at the same time sayg ernment nnot btow benefs unequally. Court papers filed July 2014 by attorneys fendg Arizona’s gay marriage ban stated that “the State regulat marriage for the primary purpose of channelg potentially procreative sexual relatnships to endurg unns for the sake of jog children to both their mother and their father… Same-sex upl n never provi a child wh both her blogil mother and her blogil father. Contrary to the pro gay marriage argument that some different-sex upl nnot have children or don’t want them, even those s there is still the potential to produce children.

Lee Badgett, PhD, Director of the Center for Public Policy and Admistratn at the Universy of Massachetts at Amherst, stated that for many gay activists “marriage means adoptg heterosexual forms of fay and givg up distctively gay fay forms and perhaps even gay and lbian culture. Pla Ettelbrick, JD, Profsor of Law and Women’s Studi, wrote 1989, “Marriage ns ntrary to two of the primary goals of the lbian and gay movement: the affirmatn of gay inty and culture and the validatn of many forms of relatnships. LGBT activist llective Agast Equaly stated, “Gay marriage ap hetero privilege… [and] creas enomic equaly by perpetuatg a system which ems married begs more worthy of the basics like health re and enomic rights.

TEN REASONS TO SUPPORT GAY MARRIAGE

Queer activist Anrs Zanichkowsky stated June 2013 that the then mpaign for gay marriage “tentnally and malicly eras and exclus so many queer people and cultur, particularly trans and genr non-nformg people, poor queer people, and queer people non-tradnal fai… marriage thks non-married people are viant and not tly servg of civil rights. In Islamic tradn, several hadhs (passag attributed to the Prophet Muhammad) nmn gay and lbian relatnships, cludg the saygs “When a man mounts another man, the throne of God shak, ” and “Sihaq [lbian sex] of women is za [illegimate sexual terurse].