Marriage Equality

Luis Duran Cornelio

Marriage equality is a controversial topic well known to most of people.

Not because everybody is interested in that topic but because most people
have an opinion for or against it, even they are gay or not. Since I have been
in California from May of last year, I have heard about the discussion; should
marriage equality be for everyone? The question looks very easy to answer,
at least for me. However, my answer, positive or not doesn´t explain by itself
why this is so important for a lot of people. I decided to do some research
about what privileges have married couples in United States. The answer
really surprised me. Marriage offers more than 1,138 Federal benefits and
responsibilities, not including hundreds more offered by every state. I think it
is necessary to mention some of the main benefits of marriage because from
that perspective we could understand why LBGTQ communitiesclaim for
Marriage equality. Some of the benefits of Marriage are these:

• In times of crisis, spouses have hospital visitation rights and can make medical
decisions in event of illness or disability of their spouse.
• Employers offer spouses sick leave, bereavement leave, access to health insurance
and pension
• Married couples in elderly care facilities are generally not separated unless one
spouse's health dictates hospitalization or special care.
• The dissolution of a marriage requires a determination of property distribution, award
of child custody and support and spousal support. Absent divorce, there is no uniform
system for sorting out the ending of a relationship.
• With marriage, a couple has the right to be treated as an economic unit and to file
joint tax returns (and pay the marriage penalty), and obtain joint health, home and
auto insurance policies.

After seeing some of the benefits of marriage several questions arrive

to our essay. For instance, why are there big movements against same sex
marriage? What are the justifications, if any, against marriage rights for
everyone? Should homosexual couples understand that marriage is a social
arrangement that does not apply to them? Or maybe, should heterosexual
couples see that a social agreement it is not enough to affect the rights of
others? My idea to develop this essay is the next one. First, I will bring some
of the arguments against marriage equality for everyone. Then, I will make
some comments on Professor Bockover´s point of view. Finally I will share my
own opinion about this controversial topic.

Two of the arguments against marriage equality exposed in the HSU

Ethic Forum seem to me to be the most widely accepted. The first one is the
Natural Law and the second one Theology argument. The first one has a very
strong weight in Western and Eastern society because ofreligion. The weight
of “tradition” with all the implications that that word implies, is really
important here. The natural law theory says that actions are right when they
are natural and wrong when those actions are unnatural. In other words,
social actions, to be considered right, should be in accordance with nature.
Because homosexuality is not in accordance with nature, equal marriage is
inacceptable. The second theory, very accepted in Western culture, is the
theological theory. According to this metaphysical doctrine marriage between
equal sexes is a bias. Marriage is only allowed between a man and a woman
because that is what God created.

It is not my intention in this essay to give a detailed description about

the two theories above mentioned. However, I will defend those theories,
although I´m not in agreement with them. Why are those theories, the
natural and the theological, so accepted by many people? I will put myself in
the place of them, the place of the people who do not agreewith marriage
equality. First of all, we cannot accept what we cannot understand. It is
understandable but not justifiable that some people reject homosexuals
because they just cannot see themselves, sexually, with another person of
their same sex. It is hard to change the mentality of a whole community.
However, it is the role of our system of education to teach to the coming
generation about tolerance of all of those controversial topics that for
“natural law,” but not for psychology, are hard to understand. I have seen in
many cases that children from tolerant and open-minded parents have more
of probability to understand and accept what they have learned. My second
argument to defend those who are against married equality is to analyze the
weight of tradition in human society. This explanation is connected with the
theological argument. The word tradition comes from the Latin traditionem,
acc. of traditio which means "handing over, passing on". Traditions are often
presumed to be ancient, unalterable, and deeply important, though they may
sometimes be much less "natural" than is presumed. Adding to the weight of
tradition we have a lot of kinds of religious beliefs. Unfortunately, most of
them, in different ways, are against equal marriage equality for
homosexuals. From the understanding of tradition we can see, in a simplistic
way, why so many people see homosexuality like an aberration.
 After seeing two of the main arguments against marriage equality let´s
summarize and make some comments on Professor Mary Bockover´s point of
view in the HSU Ethic Forum. Professor Bockover believes that the view that
legal marriage should be restricted to heterosexual couples is upheld in
some misunderstandings based in what should be the role of the state in our
lives. She proposes that the language of “marriage” should be abandoned in
the political and legal language. This is because that word is loaded with a
metaphysical meaning, “sanctity.” As all of us know, the role of the state
does not include giving transcendental meaning to the citizens´ lives. From
Bockover´s point of view “all citizens of age in the state of California should
have an equal right to join into civil union with the person of their choosing”.
She believes that rather than granting same-sex couples the legal right to
marry we should take away that right from heterosexuals. In this position we
will begin to talk about “civil unions” instead marriage.

I am totally in agreement with Bockover´s point of view about civil

unions instead of marriage equality, however, I will bring some arguments
against her ideas with the intention of having a philosophical discussion
instead of really being in disagreement with her point of view. First of all, why
should we change the constitution and laws to allow same sex couples to get
married? Do we not live in a democratic, political, and representative
democracy? If that is true, and I´m pretty sure it is, should LGBTQ groups not
accept that in a democratic battle they lost the rights that they were looking
for? If we accepted, for instance, that McCain lost on November 4, why
shouldn´t we accept that the intention to get marriage equality in California
was lost as well? Maybe you will argue that in this case, different from the
Republic defeat, we are talking about human rights, but I argue that it is not
so simple like that. In the next paragraph I will explain my argument.

Western society has a particular way to decide and to put in practice

the most important decisions which will affect the population. We have called
this democracy. Inside the term of democracy we have something that
throughout history has been called “majority rule”. The "majority rule" is
often described as a characteristic feature of democracy. Let´s see a brief
definition of this term. Majority rule is a decision rule that selects one of two
alternatives, based on which has more than half of the votes. From this
doctrine the numerical majority of an organized group can make decisions
binding to the whole group. Although the controversial meaning of the
majority rule is not our discussion here, we should accept, under the
previous definition of “majority rule”, that everybody must accept the
decisions that have been made by this strategy. Why? Because everybody,
under the protection of the modern state, has signed, direct or indirectly, as
Rosseau says, a social contract: “…each of us places his person and
authority under the supreme direction of the general will, and the group
receives each individual as an indivisible part of the whole...”. Rosseau
(1762). If this is true, and it is, the general will only can be known by the
“majority rule”, and because we are part of the Social Contract in the
modern society, we should accept our political decisions. From this point of
view Californians should accept, for a while and until future elections, that
not all of them have the rights to get married because that is how the
majority has decided.

In my last argument against equal marriage for everyone we have a

standoff, because the fact that the majority in a social group decides
something, in this case, the approval or not of marriage equality, does not
mean that that the decision is ethically correct. But this is not the discussion
here. My intention was to have a philosophical discussionof the theme. In
my opinion everyone should have the right to get married. However, I´m not
sure that every kind of couple should have the right to adopt or have a baby.
But, again, that is not the discussion of this paper.

Concluding this essay I will ask again; should have everyone,

homosexuals and heterosexuals couples, the right to get married or not? I
see that kind of questions and I still cannot believing that, after more than
three centuries talking about human rights we still asking that kind of
questions. The first article of the United Nations Universal Declaration of
Human Rights is still being just a beautiful sentence for most of the
government over the world. The delightful and brilliant phrase “All human
beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with
reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of
brotherhood” is still applicable only for some groups of human community
and not for all human beings. Sometimes, when I think about those kinds of
questions asking about who deserve rights and who does not I feel so
outraged and angry that I prefer do not talk about it. For many people the
question nowadays is not what is and which are human rights, everybody
knows the answer of that. It seems to me that the question nowadays is who
is human and who deserve those human rights. It is true, as we can see in
the contemporary world that lesbians, gays, transsexuals, immigrants and
minorities are not included in that group. I am pretty sure, with a little of
hope, that in a few hundred years we will look to the past and we will say:
how can it be possible that one hundred years ago our old generation
hesitate or were not sure about the rights of LGBT groups. I hope we will ask
that question and everything will be different because nowadays we ask how
could it be possible that one hundred year ago women didn’t have the same
rights as men. Everybody should have the same rights based in the fact
every human being is endowed with those rights. At least something is very
good here; the fact that we are still discussing about who has rights and who
doesn´t, is a positive signal concerning the ability of human beings to
discover themselves. It is true that some members of our social community
cannot see that, but it is also true that the discussion is still open and that is
a hope for all of us. We will continue fighting for the ideals that we believe.
Hence, one sunny day, as hashappened before in history, we will see our
hopes and dreams turned into reality. Equal marriage for everyone!