Legalizing Love:
Marriage Equality for Same Sex Couples
When people attend the wedding of a friend or a loved one, they are generally witnesses to the love and happiness the couple shares as they begin their new life together. But what if, even after all of the hard work and the excitement of planning the wedding to the person they love with all their heart, someone walks into the chapel and tells the couple they cannot be married simply because they are the same gender? What if that person tells the couple that it doesn’t matter if they love each other, that if they got married, they still wouldn’t have the same rights as any other couple? Could one stand by, watch their loved one be told such a hurtful thing, and see their heart break in front of their own eyes? Gay marriage should be legalized in every state and the couples should be given the same rights as any straight couple, such as, adoption rights, equal military benefits, and equal healthcare coverage because the government has no right to deny loving couples their happiness and it is discrimination that they do so.
Keeping same-sex couples from getting married is just another form of discrimination that this country is putting innocent couples through and against their constitutional rights. Discrimination is defined, in the dictionary, as “the treatment or consideration of, or making a distinction in favor of or against, a person or thing based on group, class, or category to which that person or thing belongs rather than on individual merit.” This country has had multiple indiscretions with discrimination and the inequality of rights in the years that have passed. Discrimination against African-Americans, inter-racial marriages, people who do not share the same religion, and against women, all who wanted nothing more than the equal rights that were deserved from the very beginning. It states, in the Constitution, that all men are created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain, undeniable rights: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and to deny these couples their happiness is unconstitutional.

In most religions, they all usually have something to say when it comes to same-sex couples “laying together”. It’s immoral, disgraceful, and a sin and they will all go to every religion’s version of hell, but in most religious books their deities speak words of acceptance, love, and not being judgmental. It doesn’t matter if they’re a pastor, preacher, monk, or any form of a leader of a church, they are not God and they cannot judge others. No one has seen Heaven and returned to say there are no same-sex couples in Heaven or that they have all gone to Hell. Maybe more churches should preach acceptance instead of keeping their ‘God-loving’ followers so close-minded. God had a big enough heart to create all of us exactly the way we were meant to be created, why can we not love each other for that same exact reason?
Adoption amongst same-sex couples is almost impossible without an incredible amount of money and influential power on their side. Straight couples, who are no more or less qualified to raise a child, would have an easier time adopting a child because many people believe that raising a child in a same-sex household will affect the child later on in life. In a study of forty-nine young adults, between the ages of fourteen to twenty-nine with lesbian, gay, and bisexual parents, were interviewed for a study which looked at how they believed their families were affected by marriage inequality and their outlooks on the lifestyle. More than two-thirds voiced indisputable support for marriage equality while also pointing out multiple legal and symbolic benefits that their family members were denied. As the first study of its kind, the research holds vital inferences for marriage equality and provides a strong foundation for future studies featuring this topic (Goldberg 1).
In the military, even if they fight with all they have and give