Prop 8 Has Been Overturned

The debate over gay marriage really pisses me off. It shouldn't even be a debate anymore, since a rational argument against it simply does not exist. The same tired arguments have been debunked over and over again, and yet everyone insists on repeating them. And it works. It's infuriating. These morons are completely deaf.

Social issues are always the most prominent things on my mind when I vote, and when it comes to social issues, Republicans are downright monsters. Only a monster would gleefully deprive happiness from other people of whom he knows nothing about, and believe himself to be morally just in doing so. Although this is a huge victory for civil rights, we still can't forget all the other states where same sex marriage is still illegal. And this is likely going to go to the (extremely conservative) Supreme Court.

A couple years ago for my speech class, I wrote a speech arguing in favor of same sex marriage. I'm really passionate about this issue, and I figure this is as good a time as any to share some of this. Here's my favorite tidbits:

One of the strongest and most used arguments against same sex marriages is that it is unnatural—that it is not the way nature, or God, intended things to be. In our every day common sense thinking, it's easy to see why this is convincing. There is no natural way for a gay couple to procreate. There's no apparent use for homosexuality, evolutionarily speaking. But the same can be said of some straight marriages. Not all straight couples wish to have children. Many aren't even able to. So should we then tell those married couples that they're only together out of lust or perversion, and that their marriages are no longer valid?

The concept that homosexuality is somehow abnormal to nature is a myth. Hundreds of species engage in gay behavior, such as bears, chickens, cheetahs, penguins, whales, or gorillas. In fact, according to Bruce Bagemihl in his book, “Biological Exuberance,” among the 1,500 species of animals that have been extensively observed by humans, 450—almost one-third—of them have exhibited homosexual behavior. The range of this behavior varies from briefly exerting one's dominance, to the complete rejection of heterosexual partners (even while in heat), or even life-long pairings where the partners go so far as to adopt and raise orphans.

This brings us to another argument, that gay couples are not capable of raising a healthy child. If the critics honestly believed this, then why is there never a peep about the convicted felons, murderers, and known child molesters who are perfectly able to get married and have children, and do so every single day? There is no outrage over these scumbags raising children, on the same level of outrage over gay couples.

The claim that a child needs both a mother and a father in order to be raised correctly is also false. There have been dozens of studies on this topic, nearly all of them contradicting this claim. They show that there is no difference, whatsoever, among children raised by straight parents, and those raised by gay parents.

[...]

Anti-gay marriage proponents also argue that to allow gays to marry would open the door to other, more sinister things, such as bestiality, or incest, or polygamy. This is a classic slippery slope. Its only use is to incite fear into whoever would listen. These things are all unspeakably terrible, so we obviously shouldn't take the first step that would lead to them. If this were really true, wouldn't these things have already happened in countries where same sex marriages are legal? They're already legal in countries like Canada, Spain, and Norway. No one is demanding to be married to animals, or their own sisters, or to have multiple wives, in any of these countries.

The fact of the matter is that supporters of gay marriage are advocating for two consenting adults to be wed. Nothing else. Gay marriage opponents should stop treating them like they're the ones hoping for incest and bestiality, when these horrifying things have absolutely nothing to do with the debate.

[...]

There's also this concept that allowing gays to marry would somehow lessen the marriages of straight couples, that since it isn't the way marriages have traditionally been done in the past, it would somehow be a threat to marriages that are already legal. I personally don't see how allowing more marriages would be a threat to marriage. The main reasoning behind this traditional thinking is the Bible. The Bible says that a man shall not lie with another man, that it is an abomination. The Bible also says that God hates divorce, and yet 50% of straight marriages in America end in failure. Why is divorce legal?

This leads us to the most popular argument—that homosexuality goes against the Bible and Christian principles; and since America is a Christian nation, gay marriage should not be legal. Regardless of the fact that not all Christians agree with this interpretation, America is not a theocracy. There is nothing wrong with a person in government using the Bible as his moral compass, but making important decisions which impact the lives of others, using only one interpretation of a book which not everyone even agrees with, is not only irresponsible, it's downright un-American.

The founding fathers, while most of them were indeed Christian, still hated the idea of religion integrating into government. That's what Europe did. That was for kings. The founders were products of the Enlightenment—an age where freethinkers would strongly oppose organized religion, and would rather worship God on a more personal level, which doesn't interfere with anyone else's beliefs. Many founders, including Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin, weren't even Christians at all, they were deists, meaning they believed in a personal creator, but not one which interacts with the affairs of the universe. George Washington himself is quoted to saying “...that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”

I won't try to argue that the founders would support same sex marriage, because let's be honest, they wouldn't. They were products of their time, with standards and morals different than our own. In fact, on one occasion where Washington discovered that two soldiers in his army had tried to commit homosexual acts, he quickly tried them, and kicked them out.

But whether the founders themselves would or wouldn't have supported same sex marriage is, for the most part, irrelevant. They realized that topics would come up in future generations which they would have no control over, and they left the constitution open to interpretation just for that reason. Slavery, for example, was a heated debate, even during their time. They knew the issue would not be resolved within their lifetimes, so the topic was purposely left out of the constitution altogether, leaving that abomination on mankind to be debated for almost another century. The point is that times change, and the founders knew this. Society should try to change itself for the better, as better ideas become available, instead of trying to halt those ideas completely.

[...]

The fact that we are still debating things like this is extremely sad. People like to compare gay marriage rights to women's suffrage at the turn of the century, or to the civil rights movement during the 50s and 60s. And while the movements themselves are completely different, the arguments and philosophies surrounding them are extremely similar.

In fact, the arguments that were used against interracial marriage are literally, word for word, the exact same arguments that are being used against gay marriage right now. According to the History News Network, there were four main arguments against interracial marriage. First, judges claimed that marriage belonged under the control of the states rather than the federal government. Second, they began to define and label all interracial relationships (even longstanding, deeply committed ones) as illicit sex rather than marriage. Third, they insisted that interracial marriage was contrary to God's will, and Fourth, they declared, over and over again, that interracial marriage was somehow unnatural.