Gay Marriages

Part I: Throughout the contents of this paper, I will discuss the article dealing with the legalization of gay marriages in Massachusetts by Richard Cohen. I will begin my discussion by analyzing the article and providing a brief summary of the factual information presented in the text. In addition, I will present my opinion on the article along with corresponding information regarding this particular issue. In turn, I will present my personal beliefs on this topic and support them with other additional information to support my opinions. I will also present more details on the Massachusetts case that legalized gay marriages. This topic is important because this piece of legislation will effect every person and generation in the United States, homosexual or not.

Part II: In this portion of my paper, I will summarize the article by Richard Cohen regarding the state of Massachusetts legalizing gay and lesbian marriages. Recently, the state of Massachusetts announced that the band on gay marriages would be lifted. Despite the fact that the majority leader of the House of Representatives Tom Delay is strongly against gay marriages, he may want to stand aside on this issue. Delay, who is known for his adamant concern regarding traditional marriage, needs to understand that not only is the institution of marriage wobbling and wheezing, it is desperately on the rocks. According to statistical research, twenty percent of first marriages do last more than five years, and if the marriage lasts a decade, one third end up in divorce. Married couples, who once dominated both life and television, have gone from a high 80 percent in the 1950?s to only half of American households today. If you look into an average home in the United States today, only one in four of those households are married with children, and a reported 86 million adults living in the country are unmarried. It is easy to see from these statistics that traditional marriage is in trouble.

Gay and lesbian marriages may be the key component to rescue marriages from this social and economic relevance. Not only do homosexual couples seek marriage for the pecuniary reasons such as taxes and estate purposes, they also seek the bond of long term commitment based on love and romance. If people like Tom Delay would stop and look at the issue without such bigotry and fear, he might understand that these couples provide the best argument in their defense, love and commitment. Despite the fact that the lifestyle of homosexual might be looked upon as abnormal, they too want to practice the most traditionalistic form of love, a bond of marriage. They want commitment and love, something that most heterosexual couples don?t quite understand. The conservatives need to understand that the bond of marriage may be strengthened by the people that they fear the most, the homosexuals. Gay couples are not attacking nor mocking the institution of marriage like so many heterosexual couples are, they just want to be able to practice it.

What then are people so afraid of if gay marriages are legalized? It is already evident that women don?t need men to protect or support them, or thanks to fertilization research and development, impregnate them either. Men, on the other hand, may still need women to bear children, but single men can adopt and sex is surely not scarce. Perhaps it is the fact that gay couples have scattered convention with their lifestyles and demolished our comfy and parochial notion of the predominant sexual categories of heterosexual male and heterosexual female and nothing else. Or maybe gays just cast a queer image on a straight institution? Some politicians, who have gay children themselves, may actually succumb to the knowledge and empathy and suggest that love and commitment are universal and should not be confined to a single category of sexual orientation. Gay marriages will in no way, shape, form or fashion weaken the institution of marriage. A ?normal? heterosexual marriage will not be any less of a marriage if homosexuals share the same bond. If gays can do it and perhaps do it better than heterosexuals, Tom Delay could do all a favor in public services, put an end to the band restricting gay marriages and just step aside.

Part III: In this next portion of my paper, I will discuss my opinion about the article. Since I believe that the legalization of gay marriages could salvage the institution of marriage, I will evaluate the increasing divorce rate and the declining marriage rate in America and I will present some compelling arguments on behalf of legalizing gay marriages. I will begin my discussion by presenting more details on the Massachusetts Supreme Court decision that lifted the band on gay marriages in Massachusetts. The Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders (GLAD) filed a lawsuit in behalf of seven gay and lesbian couples in the state of Massachusetts on April 11, 2001 to pursue the right of these individuals to marry (http://www.religioustolerance.org/hom_marm.htm). ?The Supreme Court of Massachusetts was expected to follow its internal guidelines which call them to issue decisions within 130 days of hearing oral arguments? (http://www.religioustolerance.org/hom_marm.htm). The court?s decision was originally expected to be delivered on Monday, July 14, 2003, however, the decision was delayed until November 19,2003. The plaintiffs in this case, who have been in committed relationships any where from 7 to 32 years duration, feel that it would be a violation of their constitutional right not to be allowed to participate in the bond of marriage (http://www.religioustolerance.org/hom_marm.htm). ?In a split 4-3 decision, the court ruled that it would violate the state?s constitution to bar from marrying any of those couples who initiated the case? (http://www.religioustolerance.org/hom_marm.htm). Basically, the Supreme Court of Massachusetts ruled that the state?s constitution in fact guarantees gay couples to enter into the legal bond of marriage (http://www.renewamerica.tv/news/031119gay.htm). Chief Justice Margaret Marshall commented on the issue by stating ??that baring an individual from the protections, benefits, and obligations of civil marriage solely because that person would marry a person of the same sex violates the Massachusetts Constitution?(http://www.renewamerica.tv/news/031119gay.htm).

In regards to the argument that gay marriage would benefit the institution of marriage, I adamantly agree to that notion considering the declining marriage rate, increasing divorce rate and the fact that many adult are staying single and out of the bond of marriage. A report released by the Rutgers University?s National Marriage Project found that the nation?s marriage rate has dipped by 43 percent in the past four decades (http://listarchives.his.com/smartmarriages/smartmarriages.9907/msg00002.html.). Presently, Americans are