OPPapers.com

Gay Marriage

Today is a time when what is right and what is wrong is overshadowed by what seems right and what seems wrong. Controversial issues deepen the difficulty for each one of us as we determine what we believe and why we believe it. As soon as we establish our foundation, the storms of others' opinions beat against the center of our foundations. The issue of gay marriage is one of the controversies that leaves our society searching for the answers.
Traditionally marriage is the union of a man and a woman. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary definition of marriage reads "to join as a husband and wife according to law and custom; to take as husband or wife; to enter into a close union" (452). Dictionaries are not a biased publication and serve as a guide to what words mean. The words "husband" and "wife" show that marriage is a close union between a man and a woman. This idea could be disputed if we only looked at the third part of a definition—"to enter into a close union." But if we only look at the third part, then we change the definition altogether. Obviously we can not look only at a dictionary to gain a deeply rooted belief; so let us continue with the search for a firm foundation.
Elections are being affected by the way people stand on this issue. After the 1992 election, President Clinton, who is said by Human Events to be the most "pro-gay President in history," adamantly tried to abolish the ban on gays in the military. This was a victory cry for many homosexual activists. Then in the 1996 election, President Clinton admitted he would not openly oppose the bill in Congress that defines marriage as "a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife" ("Same-sex Marriage Imperils the Family"). President Clinton, who generally supports gay rights, gives Americans a reason to believe that perhaps gay marriage is one step too far. Even First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton agreed that marriage should be a union of a man and a woman...