The Fundemental Right to Marriage Equality

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It was less than one hundred years ago that African Americans were made to sit at the back of buses, drink from separate drinking fountains, and made to go to separate restaurants simply because of the color of their skin (“Background on Racial Discrimination”). We look back now and wonder how our predecessors could have been so ignorant to the fact that skin does not change a person. We can’t understand our ancestors’ refusal to give rights to these people, whose only crime was that they were different. It is common knowledge that what matters is what is inside a person, is it not? For we are all human, are we not? So why, when the majority of our society thinks this, is the question of same-sex marriage even being asked? The denial of marriage equality in nearly two-thirds of the fifty states of America will be just as inexplicable and unfathomable to our decedents one hundred years in the future as our predecessors’ actions towards African American Civil Rights are to us. ("Should Gay Marriage be Legal?”). Same-sex marriage should be legalized in every corner of the country, as well as every continent, if only for the reason that everyone is human, and as such, should have the same rights as every other person, including choosing who they love.

There are many facts that people don’t know about marriage and the benefits it would give same-sex couples. One of these benefits is that marriage allows hospital visitation rights to spouses. Not only that but it also allows them to make medical decisions in the case that their spouse has been disabled or otherwise injured. Married couples also have creditor protection of their marital home as well as are entitled to financial benefits. These include disability, pension and social secu...

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...the same opposition as homosexuality does (Greenspan). People also argue against changing the institution of marriage. They say that because marriage has always been between a man and a woman, it should stay that way. Despite this, the institution of marriage has been repeatedly altered with the evolution of a society and its culture. It has drastically changed from the time when women were considered their husbands’ property and when people couldn’t marry interracially (Lipp).

“The important thing is not the object of love, but the emotion itself” (Vidal).

Marriage equality should be granted to everyone, for everyone is human and everyone has a heart. Because it is contents of a person’s heart that truly make a human being, and why does who that heart love make a person any less human or any less deserving of the rights that are granted to every other person?

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