Marriage equality and LGBT recognition has been in the news a multitude of times in the past few years. Recently, the Supreme Court struck down the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) which denied same-sex couples from receiving the same rights and recognition as heterosexual couples, but now, same-sex couples are allowed equal rights and benefits under the law. This gain was what the LGBT community has been fighting to win, and it is a huge victory on their side. In 1992, when DOMA was enacted, no state allowed the marriage between same-sex couples, however, now 12 states legally sanction lesbians and gays to marry.
Majority opposed DOMA because of its overstepping of the Constitution and the rights people have as citizens, no matter their sexual preference. Justice Anthony Kennedy spoke for the majority of the Supreme Court when she stated, “By seeking to displace this protection and treating those persons as living in marriages less respected than others, the federal statute,” was unconstitutional and ultimately unjust - which it is. Because DOMA is no longer being carried out, gay and lesbian couples will now receive a multitude of financial and health benefits that they weren’t allowed to gain prior to the Supreme Court’s ruling.
The most opposition to equality rights for gays and lesbians mainly comes from religious groups who look down on same-sex marriages. Religion is very subjective topic so there will always be arguments about what one person finds morally corrupt or wrong, and another finds perfectly fine. To a lot of Christians and other religiously affiliated people, though, homosexuality is not tolerated as much as one would hope.
Seeing as we attend Booker T. Washington HSPVA, a school known for it’s large LGBT community, I can’t imagine my peers not being awarded the same benefits and rights as I will receive when we all grow older. The idea that man and women only deserve rights is preposterous and very ignorant. Saying that (I’m sorry for using this example) Kim Kardashian and her divorced-too-quickly-to-know-his-name husband (who were married for a whopping seventy-two days) deserve more rights than Neil Patrick Harris and his husband David Burtka (who have been in a committed relationship for longer than eight years) seems a bit ridiculous. The most important message in the Constitution is equality, and the very first lines read “We The People”, so there shouldn’t really be any argument to the idea of marriage equality, should there?
The most opposition to equality rights for gays and lesbians mainly comes from religious groups who look down on same-sex marriages. Religion is very subjective topic so there will always be arguments about what one person finds morally corrupt or wrong, and another finds perfectly fine. To a lot of Christians and other religiously affiliated people, though, homosexuality is not tolerated as much as one would hope.
Seeing as we attend Booker T. Washington HSPVA, a school known for it’s large LGBT community, I can’t imagine my peers not being awarded the same benefits and rights as I will receive when we all grow older. The idea that man and women only deserve rights is preposterous and very ignorant. Saying that (I’m sorry for using this example) Kim Kardashian and her divorced-too-quickly-to-know-his-name husband (who were married for a whopping seventy-two days) deserve more rights than Neil Patrick Harris and his husband David Burtka (who have been in a committed relationship for longer than eight years) seems a bit ridiculous. The most important message in the Constitution is equality, and the very first lines read “We The People”, so there shouldn’t really be any argument to the idea of marriage equality, should there?
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