Steve Mizek
ENG301

You’ve been in a wonderful, loving relationship for seven years with the same person, but are not allowed to ask them to marry you. You’re in the hospital after a car crash and the doctor needs permission to perform a risky procedure on you to increase your chances of living. Your significant other is not allowed to sign off on it. You’ve died, and your significant other is unable to collect your social security benefits. If you’re a queer couple living in America, you’ve been denied these rights. You’ve been treated as a second-class citizen and met with many inequalities. But marriage is about love, not about the genders of those involved. Queer couples should be allowed to marry and be privy to the same rights as straight couples.

Marriage is one of the most common desires that people have as they grow up. Over 50% of America’s population older than 15 is married. It’s reinforced all throughout society that when you find someone you love very much and want to spend the rest of your life with, you propose marriage. Parents and family members begin to worry if a son or daughter does not find someone to marry. It’s become an expected desire of all humans – something that you would suspect everyone would want. Because marriage is so common and so highly desired, it’s of little surprised that gays and lesbians have the same wish. They simply want to be like the rest of the population. Much of the anti-gay marriage rhetoric, then, is used to dehumanize gays and lesbians; distinguishing them from heterosexuals serves to de-normalize their desires. Homosexuals should be granted the right to marry because they are just like heterosexuals. We all have the same desires: to be considered normal, to live comfortably with our chosen significant other. Why should queers’ desires be treated any differently than that of straights? Certainly their love is no different.

It’s become a common knowledge statistic as of late that around 50% of all marriages in the U.S. end in divorce. This is a rather disparaging figure, particularly in light of oft-said phrase, “marriage is sacred.” With our celebrities and normal people alike getting married and divorcing each other at alarmingly high rates and tales of marital scandals all over the news, it’s hard to believe that our country actually takes this to heart. How can marriage be sacred enough for it to be exclusively for heterosexuals and yet not sacred enough to be treated as such? Since straights aren’t having all that great of luck with being married, I see no reason not open it up to queers as well.

Perhaps the biggest barrier that gay marriage faces is religion. Christian religious figures from around the country have spoken out against gay marriage, saying that allowing gays to marry would topple over one of the pillars of society. Leaders and followers alike also cite a passage of the Bible that says marriage is between a man and a woman. This makes the struggle for gay marriage even more difficult, because standing up against religious values is often ineffective. However, marriage is more than a religious institution. Marriage also exists in the civil realm, and there are benefits that come with being married that are provided by our state and federal governments. Spouses have the right to see one another in the hospital and are allowed to make decisions for each other’s health in the case that it’s necessary. In many states, spouses can be on each other’s insurance policies and can receive the survivor’s benefits of a spouse’s social security. For a queer couple, these benefits do not exist. Being a life-partner is currently an undefined option for society, and this ambiguity prevents life-partners from ever receiving benefits. If queer couples could get married, they could all be under the same umbrella and reap the same benefits without any question.

In addition to providing a number of financial and emotional benefits, gay marriage would create a large number of new, “legitimate” families. As it is now, it’s difficult for gay couples to adopt, regardless of their financial status or length of time together. However, if homosexuals were allowed to marry, in theory they would be afforded the same status and eligibility for adoption. One of the reasons that queer couples are not given the right to adopt is because critics claim that because life-partners are not considered real, “recognized” family units, that a couple’s adopted child would be ostracized. But if homosexuals were given the right to marry, those sorts of families would become more common and more accepted. If it were a recognized institution, a greater level of acceptance would likely follow, and queer couples wouldn’t be as unusual.

This is a topic that’s very difficult to argue from a positivistic point of view, mostly because there is such a strong opposition that makes dehumanizing and degrading remarks about queer couples. I myself as a gay man find it tough to not just lash out at opponents and point out weaknesses in their rhetoric. What it all boils down to is that queer couples want to be treated as normal human beings. We want the same sort of consideration that is given to our straight counterparts. We want to be able to fulfill the same desires we would be able to if we were straight. We want the same rights afforded to us as those given to any other heterosexual couple.

posted by Steve at 10:58 PM