""Language and culture" do not define marriage or its purpose. The laws put in place that provides the legal benefits and responsibility of marriage do. Being denied those benefits and responsibilities because someone else says you don’t deserve them – well, that right there is the very definition of a civil rights violation."
To me, marriage represents a commitment between two people: a commitment to work together, compromise with each other, and to make it through this crazy life with another by your side. It gives you someone to rely on, someone to share experiences with, someone to hold your hand when you need encouragement, and someone to lend your shoulder to when they are in need. It’s about love and respect and the willingness to get through not only the good times, but the hard ones as well.
It seems ridiculous to withhold the marriage experience to those that do not fit into the “traditional” definition. We do not choose who we fall in love with; we do not have control over how our feelings and emotions develop, and to therefore punish someone, because they decide to make a commitment to spend their life with another and that person isn’t the opposite sex makes no sense to me.
What harm does it do to allow marriage equality? Is it going to affect my marriage, make it unstable? No. The only thing it will do is allow those non-traditional couples to take their relationships to the next level, in front of family, friends, and state. On a hedonistic level, it can only increase the overall joy and happiness experienced. After all, people involved in same sex relationships often suffer from judgment and ridicule because of whom they are attracted to or who they fall in love with. Often, society treats them different based on these arbitrary differences. It’s time to break these prejudices and allow people to reap the benefits and rights that marriage grants.
The argument against same sex marriage is only puritanical, archaic prejudices and it is time to bury those beliefs, right along with the racist thoughts that discouraged inter-racial marriages during the last century. Now is the time to end discrimination in all its forms and move forward in a way that embraces people as people, regardless of color, creed, or sexual identity.
Again, marriage represents a commitment to love, honor, and cherish; a commitment to bear through the bad and celebrate the good together. It’s about growing and learning and keeping each other warm at the end of a long day. It has nothing to do with penises and vaginas and who has what body parts. And it is about time that society recognizes as much.