Homosexual marriage should be encouraged

A-Level: Sociology

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II. Body.
A. Argument
1. “Marriage is one of the basic civil rights of man, fundamental to our very existence and survival.”
• Gays and lesbians are just like heterosexuals, in that they want their marriages to be recognized by the law. If one cannot get married with his or her beloved partner, he or she cannot be considered a fully free person.
• One way to show that our society is for liberty, equality and fraternity is to let same-sex couples obtain the basic human right to marry.
2. Homosexual marriage helps increase the quality of life of the same-sex couples.
• Homosexual couples “face problems with insurance, tax laws, and inheritance. Even something as simples as a hospital visit can pose difficulties.”
• Visiting a loved one in the hospital, applying for immigration, social security benefits, death benefits…are just a few of the rights that can only be given to gays and lesbians when their marriage is accepted like heterosexual marriage.

B. Counter arguments and Refutation.
Homosexual couples make poor parents because children are better off when raised by their biological parents.
But:
• However, this is something that happens inevitably in case of the step family. Many children are being raised by a genetically-unrelated adult at some time in their lives owing to the rather high divorce rate nowadays.
• Martin (1994, p. 61) made it clear that “Our experience, supported by child-development research and echoed by our kids themselves, shows that it is love - not biology – that makes a family”.
• Many people think that it is not pleasing to have substantial figures of children raised by homosexual couples, but as long as a child gets love, it does not really matter whether it comes from two moms or two dads.

III. Conclusion.
With the reasons shown above, I think that homosexual marriage should be encouraged. Why rain on someone’s dream when all they want to do is love each other? We should just give homosexuals the right they are fighting for and encourage them to live as they really want

Most people in the world regard getting married and raising a family as a civil right that is so basic that they do not even question it. However, this civil right does not extend to lesbian and gay couples. Some lesbians and gays exchange vows and rings to symbolize their commitment to one another and to publicly challenge the heterosexual exclusivity of marriage. Others call for an outright ban on heterosexual marriage until same-sex marriage is recognized as a legal right. These actions and attitudes have contributed to a growing public debate on whether or not lesbians and gays should have the legal right to marry. Although people are generally divided on the issue of lesbian and gay marriage, the arguments supporting their viewpoint vary. For me, I am totally in favor of same-sex marriage agreement, because marriage is a fundamental human right of everyone and it also helps increase the quality of same-sex couples’ lives.
The first reason why I am vigorously in support of same sex marriage is that “marriage is one of the basic civil rights of man, fundamental to our very existence and survival” (Cherlin, 1996, p. 498). Gays, lesbians and bisexuals are all human beings, they “have the same hopes, the same needs, the same desires, and, indeed, the same problems as heterosexual couples” (Lauer & Lauer, 2002, p. 93), so they should have all the rights that other civilians have. While most heterosexuals have a biological family they can take for granted and another family they acquire through marriage, homosexual people really have to work to make a family. The families woven together by lesbians and gay men are an example of created kinship – the kinship people must work to construct. Therefore, homosexual couples want their marriages to be recognized by the law just like heterosexual couples; they want to have that simple document that the government gives to heterosexuals which binds two people into a marriage. Sullivan (1996, p. 26, as cited in Baur & Crooks, 1999, p. 294) claimed that
We are only asking that when the government gives out civil marriage licenses, those of us who are gay should be treated like anyone else. It seeks to change no one else’s rights or marriages in any way. It seeks merely to promote monogamy, fidelity, and the disciplines of family life among people who have long been cast to the margins of society.
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