Gay Marriage Speech

Gay Marriage

1. Introduction

A. Many people today talk about the sanctity of marriage. This belief is part of the reason why many people believe that gay marriage should not be legalized in America. To these people I pose the question, is marriage really all that sacred in this country and would letting anyone who wants to enter into same sex marriage make it not so? In my opinion, people like Britney Spears and anyone else who will jump into a Las Vegas 3-day wedding, are the people who are destroying the sanctity of marriage.

B. Legalizing gay marriage in America is important because it is as much a part of discrimination as slavery was. The only difference in this battle is that religion has gotten involved as a main argument point. Many religious people argue that the marriage is a sacred thing between a man and a woman.

C. I believe that gay marriage should be legalized simply because I believe that marriage is something between two consenting adults who love each other, no matter what their gender may be. Last time I checked, marriage was about love, not about gender/ procreation/ money/ or anything else.

D. In this country, it seems to me that we are just moving from one form of discrimination to another. Now that racism is taking its leave, although there are still many cases of it today, we have started to discriminate against another portion of the population.

E. According to Divorceform.org, 74% of the population gets divorced every year and that number is only from the straight population. Many people also argue that the population can't reproduce if we have men marrying men and women marrying women. Marriage is not something that must be between a man and a woman in order to produce children because many couples choose not to have children. Should people like these have marriage forbidden to them as well?

2. Body

A. Main points for Gay Marriage:

1. Consenting adults who love each other should get married.

2. Can be just as good of parents as a straight couple

A. Many gay couples adopt children who otherwise would be left floating in the system for longer than they need be.

3. Establishing equal rights

A. No longer be a oppressed minority

The fact is, homosexuals are denied their civil rights in many respects, and this makes them an oppressed minority. Giving certain civil rights to some and denying them to others is discrimination; just like women in the early 1900's and blacks up until the 1960's.

B. Equal opportunity employment

Discrimination of gays and lesbians in the workplace is a common practice, and there are currently no federal laws to prevent it. According to national polls, the majority of Americans feel that anti-gay job discrimination is wrong, but only eleven states and the District of Columbia have laws to protect gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender persons from such inequity.

C. Can have marriage benefits/ civil rights

Consent to post-mortem examination; disclosure of vital statistics records; exemption from claims of Department of Human Services for social services payments, financial assistance, or burial payments; income tax deductions, and making partner medical decisions.

D. Recognized as an acceptable union/ freedom of expression

The fact that gay couples want to get married has nothing to do with wanting attention from the media, but they just want the same rights and recognition as other married couples.

4. Other Issues

E. Promiscuous/ monogamous

One argument made by antigay communities is that gays are too promiscuous and spread HIV. It is true that the HIV rates among homosexual males are dangerously high. Legalizing gay marriage may be able to help to promote more monogamous relationships and could possibly help to reduce the spread of HIV among them.

F. A comment on the Dictionary

The dictionary is simply a book printed by arbitrary publishers and holds no legal precedence. Not only are there many definitions of the word marriage, such as the union of two persons, but the dictionary can also be revised.

G. Is it a choice?

Almost all of the explanations of homosexuality concur that it is indeed not a choice. Sexual desire is derived from attraction, and one's propensities in that department are not a choice. If it were, then anyone would be able to make a conscious decision regarding whom he or she wanted to be attracted to. Consequently, attraction would be unnecessary when choosing a sexual partner since it would be feasible to change one's sexual desires as he or she sees fit. If homosexuality were a choice, then heterosexuality would also be a choice. In that case (theoretically), anyone would potentially be bisexual, depending on whom he or she decides to be attracted to at the time. Do any heterosexual people "choose" whom they are attracted to? Should society assume that a man who is only attracted to slim, blonde women would potentially be just as sexually attracted to a husky brunette (depending on a conscious decision he makes)? Therein lies the problem. Logically speaking, homosexuality (and heterosexuality) is without a doubt not a choice. There are a few instances of homosexuals "converting" to heterosexuality, but these claims are poorly documented, do not have any scientific foundation, and are likely to be motivated by a desperate resistance to social and/or religious stigma. In 1973, the American Psychological Association decided that homosexuality could not be cured, and it was removed from its list of mental disorders. The

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