My mother is from a catholic background, with religious ideas, but the wonderful thing about her is that she is very open minded and will never reject an argument just "because it's wrong and the bible says so". What I also love is that she makes me question my opinions and makes me argument them, and I thought I was going to lay them out here, so that maybe people like my mom who at first would immediately reject gay marriage, can read and think and maybe change their mind.
I don't even remember how we got onto this subject but I stated I was pro gay marriage (fyi, I am completely straight, married etc... so "normal"). Her gut instincts was to tell me "oh really... I have nothing against gays but marriage,... that's a stretch". She indeed never ever had problems with gays but somehow gay marriage sounded wrong to her (probably from the religious conditioning).
So I asked her this simple question: "Why?". Her answer "Hmm... I don't know... " And I think this is a pretty standard answer. People are against gay marriage because they've been fed the idea for years that it's not "natural" or the bible (or whatever religious book) says it's wrong and so instinctively they are against gay marriage, but they never really pondered the question. Well I have, and here, I will once more. Please if you do find that my arguments are wrong and/or not legit, do write (politely) to me, I am always happy to hear others' opinions.
Here are the arguments we went through, plus a few others, as to why gay marriage shouldn't be allowed, as well as the counter arguments for them:
Homosexuality is unnatural (and by extension so is gay marriage):
Let's define the word "natural": adjective - which is present in nature without the intervention of an external factor.Now I am sure, some will tell me, yes but homosexuality is not present naturally, it's a twist of the mind... This argument would be sound if homosexuality was not a common trait found in animals. Yes, animals (of any species) can be gays (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexual_behavior_in_animals), and obviously this does not come from a devious mind or human society... So... sorry to disappoint, but homosexuality IS a naturally occurring phenomenon and so should NOT be treated as a disease or a twist of the mind. The same way that people are naturally white, black or mocha, people are naturally straight or gay or both!
Homosexuality is a sin:
I will only say that it depends on what you personally consider a sin. Unfortunately if you are very religious there is not much I can say to convince you otherwise because "it is stated in the Bible". But in reality the concept of "sin" strongly depends on your religion.I would like to point out that Hebraism (jewish people) has 613 sins listed and I am pretty sure that according to them, all of us are sinners. If you're interested http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/613_commandments. As you can see, being superstitious is a sin for example, or here is another one (something that we ALL have done by the way) : "To afflict oneself and cry out before God in times of calamity". So if gays can't get married because being gay is a sin, then the jews could pretend the rest of us can't get married either because crying out before God is also a sin. Clearly, you can't forbid something just because it is considered a sin by a group of people, otherwise you would have to forbid pretty much everything and it would lead to chaos!
Marriage is a sacred pact between a man and a woman:
No, that is the definition of a religious marriage. And if we are talking about religious marriage I have no counter arguments. Yes pretty much every religion regards homosexuality as a sin and so I doubt gays will ever be able to be married religiously...But now let's consider civil marriage: a pact between two individuals who want to be recognized as a couple by law, and as such, be able to be eligible for certain benefits.
The requirements to perform a civil marriage are:
- to be in love,
- to live under the same roof,
- to support one another through life both materially and morally,
- to accept the fact that your eventual children will not turn out the way you want them to be but that whatever decision you take for them will be in their best interest and according to their choice and opinion.
We want to preserve the sanctity of marriage:
Again, the sanctity of religious marriage not civil marriage. See my previous argument.
Allowing gay marriage will give more gay kids:
Again, from
argument 1, homosexuality is a natural process (meaning you have no
control over it), kids of gay couples will not turn out gay, they will
have the exact same chance as anyone else's kid to turn gay or hetero.
Kids need a stable environment to grow in (and allowing gays to marry is an open door to allowing them to adopt):
Ok, by stable you mean man+woman. So what about the kids who see mommy gets beaten up by daddy everyday? Or the kids who wait in the car while mommy meets with someone who's not daddy? Or what about all these kids who are orphans and have to go in foster family? Go talk to a couple of them and they will tell you what foster families are like. Oh sure enough, they're all heterosexual couples but that doesn't mean they're stable. What kids need to grow up, is love... and that can be given by anyone. Don't you think it's better to have a kid raised by two guys (or girls) who love him and cherish him than by a single mom who change boyfriend every month?
Allowing gay marriage will have a bad impact on society:
How so? Gays are already integrated in society, having them married or not is not gonna change anything to the way our society works, it will just give them the same advantages that straight people have.
Now I would like to invite you to ask yourself the following questions:
What does it change for you personally if gays are allowed to marry? Chance is ... absolutely nothing. So why would you be against it?
Do you have a gay friend? Or do you know anyone who is gay? Think about him/her. Do you realize you are directly impacting his/her life? Go and tell to his face that he doesn't have the right to get married because you decided so, I dare you. If you don't dare do it then ask yourself why you don't? Probably because you know that you are out of line... Because as much as gay marriage doesn't change anything for you, it changes the world for him/her.
How would you like it that the government passed a law preventing you from doing something you want (example, go to church, vote, play basketball) just because some people you've never met judge that you shouldn't be allowed to do so? Now I'm sure
you will tell me "it's different". How? How is it different to prevent two people from getting married (an act that has absolutely no consequence on your own life or on society) than from playing basketball (again another act that has absolutely no consequence on your own life or on society)?
Do you think normal that somebody like Kim Kardashian can be married for 3 months and can get married again and again and again, while an old gay couple who have been together for like 20 years can't get married because they're gay? The fact is no law will ever forbid people like Kim Kardashian to get married so why should a law prevent gays to get married?
Do you realize that not allowing gay marriage can ruin two people's lives? Do you want to be the cause of this? For example, what if an American, a US citizen (who should have rights just because of that fact) lives abroad and is gay and while living abroad he meets a guy and they fall in love. Is it right that because they can not be married then he can't move back to the US, his own country, with the love of his life?
And finally my own arguments as to why gay marriage should be allowed:
Gays are humans. Just like blacks. Just like women. They are thus entitled to human rights, just like blacks, just like women, just like ANYONE ELSE. So what gives us the right to deny them these rights? Do you realize that being anti gay marriage is the exact same thing as being anti woman vote or anti black rights? Not so long ago, black people were not considered to have a brain big enough to have their own life, so they were slaves... Not so long ago (1920 in the USA, 1944 in France...), women were not considered smart enough to have the right to vote. For what reasons? None, except the "that's the way it should be". And if now I tell you "women shouldn't vote" you will scream and yell and find this outrageous. So why is it that you accept the "gays shouldn't marry" position? This really is discrimination, nothing more, nothing less.
Let's cut the crap, civil marriage is here to give you benefits (mostly monetary) and to be recognized by law as living together, nothing else. My husband and I got married not because we wanted to be husband and wife, but because it made everything easier. Because we had both very tough jobs and that unless we were married we would not have managed to live together. What made us marry? My husband's ex-boss who told him "Girlfriends come and go. Wives stay." The message is clear, in our society the accepted convention is for a couple to be married. And so we did, after a year and 2 months! We didn't even know our relationship was actually going to work but we knew that if we didn't get married we had no chance, and we wanted to give it a try. And 3 years later we are more in love than ever. So my question is if the law allowed us to get married for the convenience of it, why would that be denied to gays?
On the same line, gay marriage should be legal because in my book, it is a sin to prevent two people in love to be together. Not allowing gay marriage is like saying that you put a value on love. It means that love between a man and a woman is worth more than love between two men or two women, and that is simply, wrong.
Also, marriage is a protection. I knew this guy who had been living with his boyfriend for 15 years. His bf died. The family, who was very anti-gay, refused to even let him attend the funeral and kicked him out of the apartment he had been living in for 15 years (and who was at the name of his bf). The guy ended up alone and dispossessed... How is this right? How is this fair? Gays should be given by law the same protection as anyone else, and if this comes through marriage, the law has no right to deny them.
And my final argument is the following: from the moment that you are a US citizen (or any other country for that matter), you are entitled to the same rights as any other citizen and the law should not differentiate you because of your sexual orientation. If it does, it means that you are thus considered by law, a lesser citizen, and that is constitutionally wrong.
And I will end this with this quote that everyone will recognize:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
Having the right to marry is pursuing happiness, don't you think?
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