Blog 14

Same Sex Marriage

This week, something extraordinary happened, the 2.2 million people of Houston, Texas, elected an openly gay mayor, Ms. Annise Parker.  Although on her campaign she refused to highlight her sexual orientation and instead focused on experience in city finances, her election has excited gay and lesbian right’s activists around the world.  There have been several elected majors in the United States, Providence, Portland and Cambridge Mass.  Although Ms. Parker attempted to play down her sexual orientation, her opponent, Gene Locke, another Democrat ran tried to smear her candidacy by funding mailings publicizing her “same-sex agenda.”  This election opens the gateway for many other gays and lesbians running for high office.

Across the country, the debate over same sex marriage has flared up as several states including California have voted to ban same sex marriage, whilst other stares, Maine, New Jersey and Massachusetts have legalized same sex marriage.  In the early history of the issue the Supreme Court of the United States allowed states to choose how to deal with this issue, as is there right, provided by the tenth amendment, which gives the states, “the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States,” (Amendment X).  Therefore, each state had dealt with the issue through referendums and initiatives, or through the state legislature.

I propose people opposed to same sex marriage focus less on other people’s action and more on themselves.  No one wants a supposedly righteous group regulating the behavior of another group.  People should stop trying to legislate morals and recognize the times we live in and the diversity of our population.  No two people are going to think exactly the same; instead each individual has had a dynamic life experience that has shaped who they are today.  Government and those forces at work within it, as well as the religiously conservative, should not focus on the criminalizing gays and lesbians.  The so-called preservation of the definition of marriage argument is a misguided and disguised attempt at regulating people’s behavior.