Ashley Wheeler English Composition I Professor Jones Spring 011

Essay 3 Same-Sex Marriage

Audience: The magazine, Modern America Monthly, and my essay are geared toward primarily an audience of liberal Americans. Specifically, liberal American men from 20 to 40 years of age and liberal American women from 20 to 45 years of age are the audiences. Voice: Since I am a writer for a political magazine, the voice of the essay will be professional 3 rd person POV. It will be without any 1st person references, and no Is. It will be 3rd person POV because even the nature of the magazine is controversial, and therefore everything within it would have to be able to withstand scholarly scrutiny.

Same-Sex Marriage. Same-Sex Marriage creates controversy on many fronts. From religious institutions like the Catholic Church, to Legality, and finally to the Laws and realities relating to children raised in those environments debate and deliberation spring up all over. The Catholic Church, or the Church, opposes same-sex marriage partly on the basis of what some would call false fears, and the belief that men and women are inherently different. In THE CATHOLIC CHURCH, a book in the Opposing Viewpoints Collection, the National Organization of Marriage, NOM, uses false fears like, Is polygamy next?, to bolster the Church into the opposition agaist same-sex marriage. NOM provides no answer to this question except to insinuate [that] same-sex marriage is simmilar to or closely realated to having more than one spouse at a time. (Berlatsky 84) The Church teaches its followers that men and women are ontologically, or fundamently, different, and that marriage needs to opposite, complementary beings, not two people of ontological similarity. And the Churchs response to questions about its view on the fact that some sen are sexually attracted to men, but not to women? They say that homosexual temptation, just like any other illicit sexual temptation, should not be acted upon. (Berlatsky 89) Starting in 1971, with the first reported case about same-sex marriage in the US, the politics and laws have been ever revolving, but currently involves a fairly large ammount of basis in equal rights and the financial. When surveyed by Cam bridge Univerity, many people reported that their vote for same-sex marriage heavily involved the legal and economic benefits attached to marriage, as well as fairness, equality, legitimacy, and recongnition. Kathleen Hulls Same-Sex Marriage: The Cultural Politics of Love and Law reports that several participants expressed that theywere unable to get health insurance coverage as a spouse under their partners insurance policy[and] some study participants believed there would be a finacial benefit to

filing a joint tax return, and other mentioned problems with inheritance taxes and the taxation of a domestic partner benefits under employee benefits plans. (120) The study run by shows that even those for same sex marriage openly admit that part of the desire for their right is financial. Tied with the financial aspects, is the the equal rights facet. One partaker of the aforementioned survey said, We should have the same rights that straight people have, because we have the right to have a family and the right to live like everybody else does. Whats wrong with that? Were people too! Were not animals, were human beings! Whether they framed it specifically as a rights issue or more generally as a matter of equality, fairness and non-discrimination, many participants described their support of same-sex marriage in the language of equal treatment.(126) Equal rights, when it is said that all the want is equal rights, it seems kind of ridiculous that the country with the biggest history of fighting and winning the battle for legal rights is dening a large nation-wide group of people their rights. Some find this fight to be dehumanizing, others just unjust, but all find it wrong to have to fight this battle . Children as part of families with same-sex adult partners is a tricky thing obtain. For example, a loving gay family man could not adopt his foster child of two or three years, a child that went into his household as a foster-infant. Prevalent and strong, though all legal battles with the government and partners, is the need of the child for two parents. A young child does not know about blood ties with a parent; the child is not concerned with the physical realities of conception or whether the relationship develops because of biology or adoption.(Strasser 185) While some worry on the mental/physiological health of these children, they blindly try to snatch them out of the only home they have ever known, a loving family, or stopped that loving family from adopting in the first place.

With the Church saying you need two different halves to make the metaphoric whole, the legal side full of money, equality, and innate rightness, and families being torn apart or never being allowed to be created in the 1st place, how are we supposed to know whats right? How are we, as a people supposed to know what is best for our future generations? We step out of all the controversy and once again realize that marriage is nothing but two people, in love, that want to belong to each other till death do thee part, carrying the benefits granted thereof, and starting a family. A family that is sometimes borne of both partners genetics, or adopted, or fostered, or sometimes even inseminated. Any way created, still a family. Still people that love and belong to each other.