¶ … added for a few specific points. Otherwise it can be assumed that I have added my thoughts about what the authors have said. In Part Two, I have included other sources and cited them properly.
Equal Treatment the Real Issue
In this piece the author assumes a basic fact: that because something is essentially a fundamental right at least at some point it becomes necessary for our social institutions (including government and possibly religious ones) to protect the use of the activities the rights allow for. This is what the U.S.A. Today article meant in paragraphs 4, 5, and 6, for example. Rights, after all, would be useless if there were all type of obstacles put in their way of their actually being exercised. History and the law have placed themselves on the administrative side of this argument by allowing for the creation of a number of their own institutions that basically reward behaviors like marriage, which are very intimate representations of our freedoms of being caring, loving human. The article points this out in regards to the marriage ceremony and what happens when the death of a spouse occurs, for example. Since this is the case, it becomes increasingly more difficult to separate the whole idea of marriage into just a religious reflection. And any effort to do so will likely just bring about even louder arguments that will have to be arbitrated through political compromise (paragraph 1) & #8230; which seems to return the issue to one of administrative importance. For religious institutions, this may become more problematic and will make it necessary for them to look again at their moral concerns.
VALUES: The values that underlie this argument center on the belief that the systems which people make for themselves should exist to facilitate the rights we allow ourselves. Because we live collectively and operate under a form of social commitment, it is necessary that we have a contract of agreement about how this arrangement will work. Without this, social order and likely responsibility would fall apart and result in a messy entanglement (USA Today, opening). Government's role thus helps establish rules of conduct and ensure that those rules are implemented in accordance with certain expectations. Not surprisingly, marriage and the idea of there being a central institution that supports families, children and the raising of the next generation is put out front. Having government processes for protecting such an institution seems like a natural role for keeping the social agreement of marriage working.
ASSESSMENT: The argument presented here seems to be fundamentally sound. It is clearly the case that many people do not look at marriage as being grounded in religious directives or at least that marriage doesn't have to be tied to their church or its expectations. For as long as there have been governments, it seems, there have been options for marriage outside of churches (see Part Two below). In addition, there is evidence that same-gender marriage has existed for as long as people have been organized into communities. Since this is the case and because government is supposed to facilitate our rights -- not pass moral judgments on what we think or do -- it established systems for protecting that responsibility. This is clearly different from just proclaiming that "Thou Shall" or "Thou Shall Not" do something in regard to one's family. Under such a setting, the only way to get to another level of agreement is for there to be a compromise that get used and tested to see what happens in practice. The military's mixing of people of different sexual identities without the fall of order cannot be denied.
Gay Marriage Unnatural
ASSUMPTIONS: Sheldon thinks that propagation of the species is quite possibly the single most significant value of marriage. Men and women are to get married in order to bring about the union of their biological components so as to reinforce cultural standards and bear children. In addition, it is clearly the case that the biological parts of men and women were designed to impregnate the female and allow for making offspring (Sheldon, paragraph 1). This fact is indisputable and therefore must come from biological and genetic roots, which presumably arise from the Creator's grand plan. When laws and relationships are altered by historical or popular expectations, tyrannical judges, who have the
Same Sex Marriage For many years now, the issue of same sex marriage has been prominent all over the United States. It has been either present in lawsuits, competing in legislation, or ballot initiatives in order to legalize in all the states. It is seen that about seventy percent of the people are not in favor of gay marriage. The right to marry someone regardless of their age, sex, or ethnicity
..In determining the meaning of any Act of Congress, or any ruling, regulation, or interpretation of the various administrative bureaus and agencies of the United States, the word 'marriage' means only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife, and the word 'spouse' refers only to a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or wife." (Smith, 2004; p.5) Smith relates that a
" The work of Snyder entitled: "Gay Marriage and Democracy: Equality for All" states that the understanding of what is viewed as discrimination has evolved over time." (2006) This may be true since the founding of the United States resulted in laws that treated men and women unequally and which denied women the right to vote and resulted in the identity of a woman legally to essentially become "invisible upon marriage"
These responsibilities notwithstanding, the American public was already being conditioned to view the war in Iraq as a battle against extremists, that is, against the Islamist radicals who had threatened the "American" way" of life on September 11, 2001. Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson had already inflamed America's own Christian fundamentalists with talk that the terrible events of that day were to blame in part on "the gays and
same-sex marriage refers to a legal married union between two persons of the same sex. In other word, same sex partner is a man legally married to another man or a woman legally married to another woman. Since same sex marriage is a new development in the United States, the federal government has faced challenges in treating the tax issues of same-sex individuals entering into marriage. The IRS's (Internal
Lesbian Health Care Lesbian Health Issues in a Heterosexual Society The additional burdens placed on the lives of minorities as a result of social exclusion can lead to health disparities. Social exclusion theory has been used in previous research to investigate the health disparities that exist between socioeconomic classes and individuals of different ethnic backgrounds living in the United States, but it has not yet been applied to another important minority group:
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