Justin Newsom Newsom 1
Clay Stevens
English 1320
2 March 2013
The “Endless” Pursuit of Happiness America. The only country in the world where its citizens supposedly have total freedom of how they live their lives. But do we really have freedom to live exactly how we please? Maybe when our founding fathers wrote the phrase, “We have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” they meant that we have the right to pursue our desires, but may never actually reach them. So where do we focus in on to see the current example of this? The issue of gay marriage. A touchy subject by nature, this topic is one of the few issues that has been going on since perhaps the creation of man. On one side, you have the conservative, traditional group who despises the very idea of same sex marriage for many reasons. Against them we have those who welcome any sort of “taboo” way of life due to their interpretation of the constitution. The issue of gay marriage is a sensitive topic that causes us to challenge tradition with law. Since biblical times, homosexuality has been seen as taboo and in most places, outlawed. The Bible even speaks of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. In retrospect, these were the “Las Vergas’s” of the time. Cities infested with the filth of crime and sin. According to the Bible God destroyed the two cities with fire for their wicked ways. It wasn’t until the Newsom 2 highpoint of Greece that homosexuality was not only accepted, but seen as a normal way of life. So why has society stepped back and forth walking on eggshells around the issue? This topic has frightened even the most powerful of politicians and recently caused some areas to rewrite their own constitutions to allow homosexuality. This makes it even more interesting to dig deeper to find out why gay marriage is such a big issue in the United States. It is easy to say that gay marriage is easily the most controversial subject in the United States, however finding out why requires us to dig into our way of society in America. Is it right to say that anti-gay groups don’t want same sex marriage legalized just because they are afraid of change or anything out of the social norm? Groups opposing same sex marriage list a number of reasons that just recently have proved to lack support to keep gay marriage laws in place. They usually believe that the legalizing of same sex marriage will have a noisome effect on our society and ultimately destroy the very meaning and institution of marriage. Alongside this, their main arguments revolve around religion, child-rearing, the weakening of marriage laws, and tradition. Besides the fact that the average relationship between a homosexual couple is anywhere from three to six months, anti-gay protestors constantly say that gay marriage is simply not traditional. The understood definition for marriage in most cultures for thousands of years has only been recognized a male and a female. The cause of this? Procreation. Gay couples are scientifically known to not be able to reproduce biological children and because of this, anti- gay marriage groups argue that gay couples should not be able to reap the benefits Newsom 3 and protections offered by a sanctioned marriage. This then brings into question the true purpose of marriage. Is it just to be able to produce offspring to continue our way of life? Is it just because that’s what society considers to be the right thing to do? Or do we marry someone because of our feeling and emotions we feel for them. When observed from a political standpoint, it is not a law that all married couple must procreate. So using the fact that gay couples can’t produce offspring is no longer any help in court.
The truly surprising thing is that these groups are not alone. The most important thing to remember is that different members of society think differently than others. Most of society has become accustomed to opposing gay marriage