Essay About Interracial Marriages And Homosexual Couples

Same Sex Marriages
Essay Preview: Same Sex Marriages
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Marriage is understood to be the decision of two people to commit
themselves to each other. Marriage has no conditions, which would
prohibit same sex partners. If we look closely at the purpose of
marriage, we would see that it is actually in the best interest of our
society to allow same-sex marriages. Marriage is an institution which
promotes stability, family, and is societies lawful way of connecting
two people.
Marriage is more than just a way of making relationships permanent.
Society recognizes its importance by attaching benefits such as special
tax treatments, social security, veterans benefits, lower insurance
rates, and property and supports rights upon divorce. Therefore,
restricting the rights of marriage also restricts the many privileges
that go along with it. Homosexuals want to marry for the same reason
that heterosexuals have and there should be no reason why they are not
allowed to. America went through the same sort of arguments with,
whether or not to allow interracial marriages, and I believe that the
same outcome will follow.
Homosexual couples are now trying to win the privilege of marriage,
just as interracial couples were fighting for the same thing some 35
years ago. In Loving vs. Virginia, the state was challenged by an
interracial couple who married in Washington D.C. and then moved back to
Virginia (Price). Virginia did not accept their marriage license as
valid and the couple was sentenced to one year in jail or to leave the
state of Virginia for 25 years. The sate of Virginia had a law that
prohibited marriages between people of different races, which read:
“All marriages between a white person and a colored person shall be
absolutely void without any decree of divorce or other legal process.”
This is a horrifying resemblance to South Dakotas anti-gay marriage
bill, which says:
“Be it enacted by the legislature of the State of South Dakota: Any
marriage between persons of the same gender is null and void from the
beginning.”
These laws against interracial marriage were common years ago, just as
the state laws against gay marriage are now common.
When the Loving vs. Virginia went to the U.S. Supreme Court, it ruled
that “The freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race
resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the
state”(Richardson). Before that decision, California was the only state
that had made interracial marriage legal. This is exactly what our
nation is now looking at with the state of Hawaii in the process of
legalizing same-sex marriages. The two issues also have similarities in