There is a war being fought over how to define the term "marriage". This argument is fierce due the fact that the definition of marriage is being challenged on the basis of it’s morality or, in other words, whether it is right or wrong. Many conservative organizations such as religious and other social conservative groups contend that the definition of marriage should remain as or return to being the formal union of one man and one woman or in other words, a heterosexual couple, via legal commitments and/or religious ceremonies citing religious and social reasons. The other more liberal groups such as gay rights groups on the other hand contend that the traditional view is outdated and that nations should either adopt or retain the official recognition of the marriage of same sex unions as legitimate marriage stating that same sex couples composed of consenting adults should be allowed to the rights and responsibilities that come with marriage. Despite the calls to bestow upon consenting adults in same sex couples the rights and responsibilities of marriage, this should not be done on the basis of the morality and social implications of doing so.
In order to analyze this issue in a comprehensive manner one must analyze it from a normative ethical perspective. Normative ethics is the branch of ethics, the branch of philosophy that is defined as the science of human conduct that investigates the criteria of what should be considered right or wrong. The basis for using a normative ethical approach to resolve this is that the issue is within the scope of the field of applied ethics, the branch of philosophy that deals with specific, and controversial moral issues such as abortion, the death penalty and applied ethics has it’...
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..., Gregory. "“SUFFER THE CHILDREN”: WHAT’SWRONG WITH GAY ADOPTION?" Christian Research Journal 28.2 (2005). Print.
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PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION
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The quest to find a biological substrate for homosexuality resembles an earlier movement in research to determine the nature of I.Q. scores. Both revolve around finding a biological basis for differences in human behavior. Like the previous research on intelligence, the research on homosexuality is plagued with difficulties. One large obstacle in this type of research is the difficulty in making statements about causality from correlational studies (simple, linear relationships between two variables) (4). In other words, it is difficult to determine what comes first the chicken or the egg.
Mondimore, Francis Mark. A Natural History of Homosexuality. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.
A debate is raging in America about who people have a right to marry. In response to lesbians and gays asking for the right to marry, many legislators are writing laws to ban same-sex marriage in their respective states. Even President Bush supports a Constitutional amendment that would ban same-sex marriage (prez.bush.marriage/). Opponents of such legislation do not want discrimination passed into law and are protesting at every opportunity. One must understand the reasons that people want to ban same-sex marriage before he or she can effectively argue about the subject. Many advocates of same-sex marriage bans say that allowing gays and lesbians to marry would degrade the institution of marriage because marriage is only supposed to exist between a man and woman. In addition, allowing same-sex marriage would cause problems for society (Issues and Controversies on File). One theory why opponents may fight against same-sex marriages is that heterosexual marriages have long reinforced traditional gender roles within marriage and that allowing same-sex marriages would cause males to lose their authority to subordinate females as heterosexual couples begin to model same-sex marriage gender equality (Calhoun 157).
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Jacques Balthazart, in the book, Biology of Homosexuality, examines the historical and cultural context in which homosexuality is expressed and attempts to dissect homosexual behavior and cognition from a biological perspective. He explains that there are behaviors in human sexuality that exhibit greater diversity than the sexual behavior of other animals. This exertion may lead one to conclude that human sexuality, as a result of its biological and emotional components, is more complex than the sexuality of other species. (Balthazart, p.4)
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