Legalizing Gay Marriage Same-sex marriage is arguably one of the most controversial topics in the current American political debate. In many ways, the fact that the topic is so controversial is surprising. After all, it is difficult to see how same-sex marriage impacts those who are not homosexual or do not have homosexual family members. Moreover, in a society that prides itself on the idea of equality, to deny someone the

standard joke about America in the 1960s claims that, if you can remember the decade, you did not live through it. Although perhaps intended as a joke about drug usage, the joke also points in a serious way to social change in the decade, which was so rapid and far-reaching that it did seem like the world changed almost daily. This is the paradox of Todd Gitlin's "years of

Marrying Citizens! Raced Subjects? Re-thinking the Terrain of Equal Marriage Discourse," Suzanne Lenon attempts to parse the underlying racial assumptions present in the legal fight for marriage equality in Canada, and in doing so reveals that this topic is as much about racial identity as sexual identity. By examining Lemon's article alongside some other relevant research, one is able to see how notions of universal equality are complicated by

The advent of World War II saw and end of the period of economic turmoil and massive unemployment known as the Great Depression, and thus was a time of increased opportunity for many of the nation's citizens and immigrants, but the experiences of some groups during and following the war were far less positive than others. Some of this was due to the different histories that different immigrant groups

Anti-Miscegnation Statutes in the United States Anti-Miscegenation Statutes in the United States Previous to Loving v. Virginia, there were several cases on the subject of miscegenation. In Pace v. Alabama (1883), the Supreme Court made a ruling that the conviction of an Alabama couple for interracial sex, confirmed on the plea by the Alabama Supreme Court, did not disrupt the Fourteenth Amendment. Interracial marital sex was considered a felony, whereas adulterous sex

The true spirit and meaning of the amendments, as we said in the Slaughter-House Cases (16 Wall. 36), cannot be understood without keeping in view the history of the times when they were adopted, and the general objects they plainly sought to accomplish. At the time when they were incorporated into the Constitution, it required little knowledge of human nature to anticipate that those who had long been regarded