Gay Marriage

3 Pages 835 Words

On television last night, Rosie O’Donnell, the popular comedian and former talk show host was talking about her recent marriage to another woman. The pair had traveled to San Francisco, CA where the mayor, Gavin Newsom had legalized same sex marriages, and got married in a city court. A few days later the court was ordered to stop issuing marriage licenses to same sex couples by the United States government. The subject of same sex marriage is a very controversial topic in the United States.
Same sex marriage has be legalized in some states and banned in others. It is a topic that has passionate supporters and as passionate protesters. This topic is so controversial that the Senate voted July 14, 2004 to block the White House-backed Federal Marriage. The vote was 48-50, 12 short of the 60 needed to keep the measure alive. Six Republicans joined dozens of Democrats in dissent. Dissenters claimed that the regulation of marriage should be left to the states (Resources, 2004). The defeat of the Federal Marriage Amendment was a huge victory for gay rights advocates that assert that marriage is a right, which should not be limited to opposite-sex, couples.
In the United States, activists of equal marriage rights for same-sex couples point out that there are over 1000 federal rights and benefits denied same-sex couples by excluding them from participating in marriage. A legal denial of rights or benefits afforded to others, they say, directly contradicts the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution, which provides for equal protection and substantive due process under the law, meaning that rights conferred to one group cannot be denied to another (Resources, 2004). In the 2003 case before the Supreme Court titled Lawrence v. Texas, the court held that intimate consensual sexual conduct was part of the liberty protected by substantive due process under the Fourteenth Amendment (Bidstrup, 2004). Many proponents of same-sex marriage hav...