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Same-Sex Marriage

{text:bookmark-start} Same-Sex Marriage A Civil Matter {text:bookmark-end}
Thesis/Introduction:
The United States government proclaims freedom, liberty and justice for all; apparently, with the exception of civil rights, citizenship and privileged institutions such as marriage. Gays and lesbians as you know have been fighting for the right to marry here in the United States for several years. Here in California, we are probably most familiar with proposition 8, which passed in March 2009, overturning the Supreme Court’s decision in 2008 allowing gays and lesbians the right to marry. Currently, in the United States only two states, New Jersey and Massachusetts recognize same-sex marriages. Proposition 8 supporters opposed same-sex marriages based in part on Defense of Marriage Act (DMA), which states that marriage is reserved for one man and one woman. Suffice it to say, Congress only derived and passed the DMA Act in 1996, in an attempt to derail increasing demands that marriage be redefined to include homosexual couples or an act of commitment between any two people of whatever sex. Bily, C. (2009), “Civil Unions Pose a Threat to the Institution of Marriage.”
Pros
As stated by Ann Heather Gannon, (2008), “Same-Sex Marriage Should Be Allowed” “The Supreme Court has declared that marriage is a basic civil right, older than the Constitution itself. When civil rights are at stake there is no such thing as deserving them; they are intrinsic to our very way of life. Marriage seems as basic to me as the freedom of religion or of speech.”
Married couples are afforded approximately 1,138 additional rights and privileges than single people in our society. The disparity in taxation alone is sickening and certainly unjust. Consider this; in 2003 the national poverty threshold for a single individual was $9,600, but a single person started being taxed on earned income of $9,300, which is obviously less than the national poverty threshold. In the same year the...