Same Sex Couples, Essay Example

It is still widely believed that civil unions offer same sex couples the same advantages legal marriage does. This is a major argument from opponents to gay marriage legislation, but it does not stand up to the facts.

Legal marriage confers on spouses thousands of benefits and rights, many of which have been put into place during the ancient life of marriage itself. The institution is so old and so traditionally established in society that rights and privileges simply accrued as centuries passed, written into law and then assumed, rightly, to be in place. The reality is that no modern legal construction, such as a civil union can begin to compare in terms of benefits.

Not surprisingly, many advantages granted to legal marriages, but denied to civil union partners, are concerned with financial issues. As it has always been in the best interest of a society to keep its population going with solid family units, as such families both rely upon and assist in a stable culture, governments in the United States and abroad have made marriage as attractive financially as possible. For example, legally married couples enjoy Family Leave rights, meaning their employers must pay them if an emergency with a spouse requires time away from work. No such provision is in place for civil union partners.

So, too, is there a huge financial element in pensions. People marry knowing that pension benefits often fall to the surviving partner of the marriage, even if in diminished form. Gay civil union partners are denied this right. Similarly, when a partner in a same sex civil union dies, the surviving partner is not entitled to the social security benefits they would be under the blanket of legal marriage.

Aside from money matters, there are fundamental spousal rights civil unions do not protect. A married partner is entitled to make life and death decisions when their spouse is critically ill; the civil union partner, in the same circumstances, has no rights at all, as legally they are not even empowered as a relative.

Central to the standing of legal marriage are several concepts, and these are typically used to argue against the permitting of marriage to same sex couples. A widespread issue for many is that marriage is ordained by God, no matter the faith practiced, and same sex marriages violate traditional and inflexible religious guidelines. What this concept misses is that it is the legality only of marriage that is desired, and not sanctions from any church.

Another conceptual issue lies in the persistent belief, held despite much modern evidence, that children require parents of opposite sexes. What is interesting here is that heterosexual couples have, in fact, erased much of that notion’s validity themselves. Single mothers are more supported by society than ever before, as viewpoints have altered to see that a single father may be the best parent, when such thinking was unheard of fifty years ago. It is acknowledged today that children can thrive under any household guidance, as the traditional mother-and-father home was never a guarantee of good child-rearing. In a very real sense, heterosexual couples have furthered the cause of gay legal marriage whether they chose to or not.

Lastly, the concept persists that a gay lifestyle is a choice, and that those who make such a choice are not “responsible” enough to merit legal marital standing. This is skewed thinking on every level, for it is now accepted that a homosexual orientation is not a voluntary choice. Moreover, the unfortunate fact remains that, if demonstrations of responsible character and intent were required before anyone could legally marry, very few heterosexuals would be able to get the license.

One larger concept, or actual fact, must serve to overshadow other concerns: gay people are continuing to fight for the right to marry in the eyes of the law, and to have state-granted licenses recognized on a national level. Gay men and women are seeing legal marriage as the aim heterosexual people have always seen it as. This ambition to achieve it says all there needs to be said about the “rightness” of legal same sex marriage.