Gay Marriage Paper Research Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Gay Marriage - Research Paper Example The reasons for my belief will be discuss thoroughly in the following pages. But before that discussion, I shall present the history of gay marriage in America and the controversial landmark ruling of the Supreme Court regarding the legalization of gay marriage in San Francisco back in 2004. I shall have discussions regarding how countries such as the Netherlands have already recognized that these unions are valid and carry specific economic benefits for all concerned. I will touch upon the fact that 19 states beginning with New York, San Francisco, and Massachusetts, including California have already passed state laws legally recognizing these unions. It is my belief that our national laws and policies must be revised to follow suit or else it will fall behind the times and become irrelevant in our future societies. I will prove that in the long run, gay marriage is exactly what we need in order to cure certain problems within the psyche of our nation. In America, the first document ed case of gay marriage license application dates back to 1967 when Michael McConnel and Richard John Baker applied for an Oklahoma marriage license. This was the time of the Stonewall Riots and a huge wave of change was taking over the gay and lesbian communities. (Eskridge & Spedale 5). The Stonewall riots were taken by the gay and lesbian community as a chance to have: ... marched out of their closets and challenged their outlaw status. Lesbian and gay activists insisted that the state should no longer treat them as presumptive criminals and should instead, treat them the same as it treated straight citizens. This was the first time that the once hidden in the shadows issue of gay marriage came to the forefront of a public debate that would run for over 30 years. The state was now in a precarious position. Do they allow the re-definition of marriage as also covering same sex couples or not? Marriage had always been defined as a union between a man and a woman for decades. Now tha t definition was being challenged and the state felt a need to protect the sanctity of marriage as defined by their understanding of the law. And that is exactly what the state legislators did. But true love will never be denied. To this day, in the states where gay marriage is not yet recognized, they continue to have life bonding commitment ceremonies and construct families by conceiving children through artificial means. They are in fact, leading the normal life of any traditional couple. However prude that the United States proved to be, other countries during the same time frame were already recognizing the rights of gay couples and treating them with the normalcy that they so deserved as citizens of their country. Denmark and Sweden were the first countries to allow and recognize same sex unions. In fact Denmark is noted as, in 1989, having been the first country to: ...enact a law enacting (almost) all the rights of marriage to same sex couples. These unions, were called regi stered partnerships. ((Eskridge & Spedale 5) Due to the approval of this law in Denmark, there was an influx of gay couples into the country coming from other countries like the United States, who took advantage of the law by registering and residing in Denmark as same sex couples. As an institution, marriage by definition has been challenged and revised by same sex couples across the globe over the past decades. Although not