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Same-Sex Marriages

Same-Sex Marriage: An Introduction
The minute a human being is conceived, it is already endowed with the rights that are accorded to it by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. These fundamental civil rights include the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. They include the right to speak their minds, to express their opinions, to take part in their government. These rights also include the right to marry.
Historically, the concepts of rights, whether they are civil or political, have been in existence since the Founding Fathers of the American nation drafted the first Constitution. However, for many years, people have been denied the right to enjoy these rights. For example, for almost 400 years, African-Americans were denied basic civil rights. It was only in the 1960s, when they were recognized by American law as human beings equal to whites and are therefore entitled to the same rights, even things as simple as where to sit on a bus, or a park.
What about women? For the longest time, women were denied many political rights, like voting or running for a government position.
The above mentioned are just examples of how, over the years, governments and societies have deprived civil and political rights to people with no justifiable cause or reason. It is common knowledge that these groups were deprived of their rights because of reasons that had nothing to do with their value as human beings, but because of the value that society placed on them as human beings.
This paper discusses the same concern, which is the deprivation of the basic civil right to marry for homosexuals. This paper also discusses the various reasons that society uses to prevent the legalization of same-sex marriages, as well as the reasons why the said marriages should be legalized. This paper tries to take into account the views of various groups, especially religious groups, but focuses more on the universality of granting civil rights, in an effort...