Same Sex Marriage is Good for the Institution of Marriage!!
| As governmental entities and businesses recognize that granting various "domestic partnership" benefits to gay people helps to stabilize their employees' social lives, and makes them better (and more loyal) employees, there is a growing tendency for those organizations to create pseudo-marriage legal states. But the problem is that more and more opposite-sex couples are opting to take advantage of those benefits while rejecting the moral and legal commitment of marriage. So we have a group of gay people asking for the right to "marry", with the full commitment that entails, and a bunch of heterosexuals taking advantage of the "pseudo-marriage" states to avoid commitment! The simple justice - and direct benefit to society - of recognizing and supporting gay partnerships is now well established, and we can't turn the clock back on that. On the other hand, if gay people could simply get fully legal gay marriage (not just "domestic partnerships") then most "domestic partnership" policies would have no real reason to exist (except maybe for the heterosexuals who are afraid of marriage), and we could return to a situation in which you have to actually make a real marriage commitment to gain any benefits of marriage. And who can argue against that! |
A Straight Perspective on Gay Rights
Robin Richmond - www.robinrichmond.com
PFLAG Cleveland - www.pflagcleveland.org
November, 2001