Untitled (gay rights argument)

Another silly essay I wrote about gay rights.

Let’s face it: America isn’t perfect. It’s got its flaws: there’s greed and corruption, there’s selfishness and deceit, and there’s thinly-veiled hatred hiding in every dark corner of our great nation. I’m glad to live in a time and place where prejudice is on the decline, but to imagine that prejudice is dead is vastly overoptimistic. Women are still fighting for equal treatment, and African-Americans still face racism and stereotyping on a daily basis. However, there is another group that faces all the assumptions and prejudices of closed-minded Americans and are still denied the full extent of their right to the pursuit of happiness…and all this because of something as personal as their sexuality.

Although the open hatred of homosexuals has been reduced radically since the gay civil rights movement of the ’70s, society still isn’t entirely comfortable with homosexuality. Almost all children’s books portray love as being between a man and a woman, and most T.V. shows and movies only use gays as side characters. Frequently, the entertainment industry even uses “token” gays to help appeal to the gay community as a demographic. Homosexuality is still a footnote in American culture.

More important, however, is the fact that gay Americans still don’t have the right to marry nationwide. Sure, certain states are more liberal than others in their laws regarding marriage, but the vast majority of the country still isn’t open to providing the option of marriage to the homosexual community.

This issue moves beyond the title of marriage. In fact, gay couples often cannot enjoy the same rights as married couples. It’s common for a gay couple to be unable to see each other if one is in the hospital because they are not legally married or considered family. Additionally, if a person in a gay relationship dies before creating a will, their partner is not lined up for inheritance because they aren’t legally married. Even civil unions and similar arrangements don’t give same-sex couples the same rights as straight couples. It’a an embarrassing trend �" America still refuses to treat the GLBTQ community as equal to heterosexuals.

The fight for gay marriage is a tragically new one. Homosexuality has existed since animals began mating �" and in earlier human civilizations, it wasn’t the taboo it is today. When nature ruled, the only problem anyone had with homosexuality was that it didn’t produce offspring, and as population increased, that became a benefit. This unbiased perspective lasted for hundreds of years. It was the creation of the New Testament that spurred the beginning of modern anti-gay beliefs. Seven poorly-cited passages are the main weapons used by Christian groups in fighting homosexuality. Certainly, everyone is entitled to their own religious beliefs, but anti-gay Christian groups are often guilty of picking and choosing which Bible passages to follow �" I’d dare to say that most of them ignore the recommendations for beating children and selling daughters into sex slavery (Proverbs 13:24 and Exodus 21:7-11, respectively). Clearly, those ideas are not appropriate for modern times �" whereas arbitrary limitations of human rights based on sexuality are totally acceptable. The truth is that while the Bible conveys some incredibly beautiful ideas, parts of it simply don’t fit in today’s society.

Outside of the religious opposition to homosexuality, there are very few ways to a support an anti-gay marriage argument. One of the most popular secular arguments is that there are other ways of solving the hospital or inheritance problems (such as naming the partner as the next of kin). This often goes hand in hand with suggesting civil union-type concepts that offer all the rights of married couples to homosexual couples without the label of “marriage.”

It’s true that many gay couples would be satisfied to have these rights, but others want to have the same right as any heterosexual couple: the right to get married, not joined in a separate-but-equal union just for homosexuals. If you’re going to give them all the same legal rights, then why not just call it marriage? Civil unions are a sign of progress, but the true goal should be real equality. A man who loves a man or a woman who loves a woman should have the same right to marriage as any straight couple.

Times have changed since the days when policemen could arrest homosexuals at will. We are no longer the community that blindly feared and hated all gays, that tried to force them out of existence (or at least out of America). No, today we pride ourselves on being a forward-thinking nation, a society of open-mindedness and progress. It’s about time that America opens its eyes to the unfair treatment of the GLBTQ community and moves forward in its ongoing quest for universal equality.