Marriage Equality: The Never Ending Debate

So as I write this, the Supreme Court is being swarmed with supporters for marriage equality of same-sex couples and non-supporters. Whenever this age-old debate comes to focus I always see different ones post of why they don't believe in marriage equality, but the reasons always seem to miss the mark so in this post today I will touch on what rights same-sex couples are fighting for, some arguments against marriage equality, and my own personal defenses against those arguments.
First we'll talk about issues that many same-sex couples have been fighting over the years. One issue that is one of the main issues today is that same-sex couples are not awarded the same benefits as heterosexual couples such as Social Security benefits, filing for joint adoption, veteran's disability, joint filing of bankruptcy, next-of-kin status for emergency medical decisions or filing wrongful death claims, family visitation rights for the spouse and non-biological children, such as to visit a spouse in a hospital or prison, domestic violence intervention (using restraining orders), custodial rights to children, shared property, child support, and alimony after divorce, permission to make funeral arrangements for a deceased spouse, including burial or cremation, (for those divorced or widowed) the right to many of ex- or late spouse's benefits, joint parenting rights, such as access to children's school records and many more. I find that when it comes to simple rights as these, many heterosexuals would agree that these are great rights to fight for, but it saddens me to see that these issues tend to not be at the forefront of such debates as should we allow marriage equality. Instead we focus on reasons that are in my opinion irrelevant to the issue.

The first argument against it that I will talk about is the redefining marriage implications argument. That argument states that if we redefine marriage to include same-sex couples, we open the doors for bestiality, polygamy, and poly-amorous relationships along with incestuous ones. So let's touch on the flaws to this argument.

1. Bestiality is legal in at least 16 states which is sex with an animal. But more importantly an animal cannot concede to marriage so to say that redefining marriage opens the doorways to this absurd.
2. Polygamy and poly-amorous relationships currently exist in the U.S. They are not legal no, but many times individuals cannot be prosecuted to the full extent the law who live in sects that promote polygamy. Many of those sects, adhere to their own laws which do not look for the same benefits of the common heterosexual couple, but I will admit that this argument of possibly having to include polygamy in to the redefinition of marriage has some credence.
3. Incestuous relationships cannot be a legitimate argument only for the mere fact that it was outlawed not because of moral values, but because of biological ones. Related individuals share a lot of the same DNA and so genetic disorders that are common in families can be more likely passed down to offspring causing life-long hardship in those individuals. I believe that even if marriage was redefined, because of health issues this would not be included.

Another argument that I tend to hear often is that same-sex marriages should not be legal because homosexuality is a lifestyle choice. This touches into another age old debate on whether or not one is born gay or chooses to be gay. Although the jury is still out on this more and more evidence is pointing toward the answer being individuals are born gay. There is a new untested theory out right now that homosexuality may be the cause of epigenetics which is when your environment changes the expression of your DNA. Now like I said, this theory is untested but we have many things that show that this theory may be correct. For instance, when it comes to identical twins, if one is homosexual there is a 52% chance that their twin is as well, and that goes down to 20% in fraternal twins. Some other things to take into account are how male and females tend to on average of have differently developed common brain structures, and many studies are showing that some women who have brain structures that look like the common male will tend to more attracted to women, and vice versa. Some scientists study this phenomenon during sexual dimorphism in utero which is when a fetus starts to develop into either a male or female and have seen that women who produce large amounts of adrenal androgens (male oriented hormones) who carry female children in utero tend to grow up bisexual, and this is just one study of hormones effects on sexual orientation of many. Also I would like to make aware that homosexuality is not strictly a human act. Animals across the animal kingdom engage in homosexuality, and seeing how we share 33% of our DNA with a dandelion, and 98% with the common ape and almost all animals across that 33%-98% that we're related to engage in it this has to be a natural occurrence. Now many will then state well we are not animals and were born with free will and the knowledge of sin, trust me I will get to that in the next argument.


One argument that is the popular favorite of society is the biblical argument. Many state, "the bible says marriage is between one man and one woman." That is very well true, but this is where the issue comes into play. For one, we state a lot that the United States has a separation of church and state, which means that no matter the Christian view on the issue, that should not interfere with state matters. Also seeing how America is a melting pot, and in the 1st amendment there states a freedom of religion, I do not believe that we should make laws based solely on one's religion's view of the matter and enforce it on all. What if someone was an atheist (still considered a form of religion by many) who was homosexual? Could we say that they are subject to law based on Christian principles, especially when its suggested (the number keeps changing of the percentile and I expect this number to be false since one study shows that 30% of younger individuals claim to be of no religion and since we have citizens of all kinds of religion I just don't think this number is correct) that 70% of Americans are Christian. What about the other 30% of citizens, especially in a country that states that there is a separation of Church and state? Should their rights be infringed upon when we say are country is founded upon the principles of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Also I stated in the last argument that I would touch on free will and sin of humans since homosexuality is very well assumed to be a natural act. If individuals have free will let them choose how they want to live. You may look at it as sin but I do remember reading a Gnostic Gospel once were Jesus said to the disciples that there is no sin except for when you do things that are in the nature of adultery. That's one religious interpretation that goes against many others but hey if they want to be married so that they won't have to partake in acts that are like adultery why should we stop them?

The last few things that I would briefly like to touch on is arguments against homosexuals in general. One argument I  tend to hear is that its promoting an unhealthy lifestyle and turning others gay. Seeing how much evidence is showing that homosexuality may be biological, a homosexual cannot turn others gay, and little do many know, homosexuals make up about 1-2% of the entire population. If they were recruiting homosexuals I'm sure that number would be higher. Also someone wrote a statistic on an article that I read earlier and I have no clue if this statistic is true or not but they said, "33% of child molestation acts were caused by homosexuals." Now this statistic does not say to me that homosexuals are bad people, in fact it tells me which has already been stated time and time again that majority of child molestation acts are caused by heterosexuals, which if we look at that statistic alone, since the world likes to look at gay and not gay, then that means that 67% of child molestation is caused by heterosexuals. The very last thing that I will touch on is this, let's stop ignoring that the world is not black and white. People say well if you are born with a penis and have the XY sex chromosomes you're male and you're supposed to like girls. Did you know that some people have XY chromosomes but were born feminized and vice versa because the part of the Y chromosome that promotes male development was broken off and then attached to the X chromosome that developed in a separate egg from it? Also we have to look at the cases of hermaphrodites. Hermaphrodites are people born with genitalia of both genders. Now if the parent decided that they want a gender specific child they will have one of the sex organs removed. But if that doesn't happen we now have someone engaging both homosexual and heterosexual acts because they have both sex organs. Do we tell them their living a horrible lifestyle that they choose to live because they don't want be gender-specific? Some people may, but we can't argue that they weren't born the way they are, and if they do become gender specific, we cannot argue that they did the right thing because one of the reasons the bible says that marriage is supposed tobe between a man and woman was for the act or procreation. Hermaphrodites tend to be sterile so they have no real reason to become gender-specific other than to make others in society feel more comfortable with them.

We as a people need to stop spreading this false information about groups of people that we don't quite understand and infringing people's rights based on our own personal beliefs. If because of your religious beliefs you don't believe in same-sex marriage that is fine, but you have to understand that same-sex couples are not fighting for marriage in the eyes of God, they're fighting for marriage in the eyes of the LAW, and we ask who are we to deny these individuals the simple rights to decide if the plug should be pulled on their partners life or not or if they should gain full rights to the child or not if they have a child with their partner using in vitro fertilization and the birth parent dies the rights of the child can be passed to the birth parent's family instead of the adopted non-birth parent. Can we say that these things are right? I believe not.