Thursday, May 16, 2013

My Case For Same-Sex Marriage

In 1974, the Supreme Court said in the Cleveland Board of Education v. LaFleur court case that the "freedom of personal choice in matters of marriage and family life is one of the liberties protected by the Due Process Clause.”  If that is a fact, and it is, then marriage equality for homosexuals should already be recognized.

Arguments of the Crusaders against same-sex marriage do not stand up to scrutiny if you think about it. The tradition of marriage is a farce.  The traditional marriage supporters say that marriage has been between a man and a woman for 2,000 years. Then why did the Catholic Church argue against a white man marrying a non-white woman in the 1967 Supreme Court case of Loving vs. Virginia? In that case, the court said “The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men. Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man.”

There is the thought that a marriage is for the procreation and raising of a family. But if that is the reason why marriage is allowed, why do we as a society allow those who are unable to have children to marry? Why do we allow senior citizens to marry? They aren’t going to procreate and be able to raise a family. Also, science has become advanced enough that a woman does not need to have sex with a man to have a child. And if the goal of marriage is to raise a family, why do we allow people to get divorced if they have kids? I believe that a loving same-sex couple that is married is a better situation for children than a divorced couple. Also, how is it that people would say that a heterosexual that has been engaged in crimes against society would make for a better parent than a homosexual person that has never committed those types of atrocities against society.

The argument that angers me the most by anti-same-sex marriage crusaders is the one that the majority of people that molest children are gay people. Their conclusion is that gay people who get married and have children are more likely to molest those children. In a Pediatrics ’94 Journal article, Dr. Carole Jenny and her colleagues reviewed 352 medical charts, representing all of the sexually abused children seen in the emergency room or child abuse clinic of a Denver children's hospital during a one-year period, from July 1, 1991 to June 30, 1992. The molester was a gay or lesbian adult in fewer than 1% in which an adult molester could be identified – only 2 of the 269 cases.

Let’s examine why same-sex marriage should be allowed. Allowing same-sex marriage would stop the discrimination of people’s basic civil rights, strengthen the institution of marriage and society, and allow for what was not seen as an abomination by the Lord.

In 1989, Denmark allowed for domestic partnerships.  72% of the Danish clergy argued that it was a bad idea. A survey of the Danish clergy in 1995 found that 89% of the Danish clergy admitted that the law was a good thing. It included a reduction in suicide, sexually transmitted diseases and promiscuity and infidelity among gay people. This “experiment” shows that same-sex marriage could have the result in strengthening not just the institution of marriage, but to the society as a whole. In 2010, Denmark passed a law saying that gay and heterosexual marriages were the same in the eyes of the law.

An experiment at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm Sweden which is part of the National Academy of Sciences found in brain scans that key structures of the brain governing emotion, mood, anxiety and aggressiveness are alike in gay people of one sex and heterosexual people of the other sex. The fact that it is a physiological difference between being gay or straight means that not allowing the fundamental right to marry is purely discriminatory. It is the 21st century form of racial discrimination.  

The biggest reason for my belief in why Gay Marriage should be legal is the Bible and the relationship that Jonathan and David had. “And Saul said, I will give him her, that she may be a snare to him, and that the hand of the Philistines may be against him. Wherefore Saul said to David, Thou shalt this day be my son in law a second time.” (I Samuel 18:21, English Revised Version)
Saul had three children. Merab the eldest daughter, Jonathan, Saul’s son, and Michal, the youngest daughter. David was never married to Merab. The Bible says that David and Michal did marry. So that leaves a marriage between David and Jonathan that was acknowledged by Saul. That means that David, who is in the bloodline of Jesus Christ, became the King of Israel and did the Lord’s bidding had a relationship that was an abomination in the eyes of the Lord. That doesn’t make any sense in a Biblical sense because according to the Bible, the Lord would have seen David's relationship with Jonathan as an abomination and would have killed David. Israel would have lost the greatest king that it ever had and the promise of the Israelites would not have come to pass. So either God is a hypocrite in the homosexual way of life or man changed the Bible to cause the act of homosexuality to be taboo. We can't determine which one it is because we don't have the original transcripts. I tend to be on the side of human interference in the Bible because according to a Professor of Religious Studies at UNC@Chapel Hill, we have over 700 bibles written in Ancient Greece that scholars can study and no two say the same thing throughout the texts.How does that happen? Human interference.

Since freedom of personal choice in matters of marriage and family life is one of the liberties protected by the Due Process Clause, gay marriage is a human right. The grand experiment of America demands that equal natural rights to be obtained by everyone, not just heterosexual couples. It doesn't matter what Christianity or any other religion says. Same-sex marriage should be the law of the land. And before everybody says that it is a states rights issue, look at the constitution. All states are supposed to recognize the licenses and contracts between people of another state. So even here in Deep Red North Dakota, we are supposed to recognize the gay marriages that are performed in Vermont, Iowa, Washington, Minnesota in August and hopefully soon in Illinois. Following the Constitution is what everybody on the right says they want. Well, let's see if that is true.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great post. I was so happy when Minnesota passed marriage equality. The first thing I thought was Marcus Bachmann won't be the only gay man married in Minnesota anymore.

Brent said...

Thank you.

Zebster said...

Outstanding writing, Brent! And I agree with you. It will take some time but the hate that holds the anti-gay side together will eventually fade