Great minds...

hahaha, I can't believe so many of us chose this topic... or can I?!?! Well, see you guys at the protests, I guess!

-Kayte

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The Battle For Love

I never much thought or cared about the idea of marriage until I fell in love. Now, when I think of it, it puts the widest smile on my face. When two people care for each other so much that they are willing to pledge themselves to one another for the rest of their lives, it is the most beautiful thing in the world, and it is certainly due cause for celebration. Love is the most beautiful, most important, most powerful thing in the world; It's the reason people cry at weddings. It's the reason people cry at funerals. All we ever are as human beings is summed up by looking at who we love, who loves us, and how much of our actions are based on love. The notion that some people don't deserve the legal right to such a wonderful tradition is appalling. Gay marriage is a matter of social injustice and equality no different from the civil rights movement of the 1960s. It is an issue that needs to be fought and a battle that must be won.

Opponents of gay marriage argue everything from merely wanting to keep the institution of marriage strictly limited to a bond between a man and a woman, to the notion of homosexuality itself is an abomination before god. However, in a world where dogs and cats can legally be married, the argument of a “sanctity of marriage” still existing, if indeed there ever was one, bears no weight. Straights who marry for money, security, out of obligation and/or any other reasons otherwise decidedly based on anything other than love, or in the complete absence of love, are doing the real disservice to the institution of marriage. Straights who divorce only to collect alimony, beat their wives and children, and commit adultery are the ones committing the abominations before their god. This is not to suggest that gays would be, or should have to promise to have perfect marriages themselves, but simply that they deserve the legal rights as any straight citizen.

Marriage may be considered a holy institution, but it is also a legal one. Marriage is a serious binding contract, and in a society where we claim to have a separation of church and state there ought to be no debate as to whether or not two citizens, who are of consenting age, should be allowed to join in civil union. Beyond that, it should be the sole business of they and their personal church as whether to call it also “holy matrimony.”

I have already voted for gay marriage initiatives and will continue to do so. I would march in protests, invest time and money, apply bumper stickers to my car … I would even hold off getting married myself until all my fellow human beings in love have the legal right to do so.

All that protests of gay marriage really boil down to is nothing more than hypocritical, childish arguments that homosexuality is queer, unnatural, deviant and “wrong.” These abysmal sentiments are hardly justifiable reasons to keep an entire culture oppressed. And, as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. states, in his letter from Birmingham jail, “Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever” (King 376).

Works cited

King, Martin Luther. "Letter from Birmingham Jail." 75 Readings Across The Curriculum.

Ed. Chris Anson. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2008. 376.