Gay Marriage

Current President Bush has gone on the record as saying that marriage is a union between man and woman. A civil union is not recognized as legally binding by any state other then the state wear it was performed in. Modern American society has privatized its view of marriage. in why to marry, what we expect from marriage has also changed. Marriage, traditionally limited to unions between men and woman, in its modern state is slowly beginning to include the idea of same sex couples.

Current popular opinion does not hold with same sex marriage. Society sees marriage as an institution whose contours are plastic, whose purpose is to provide emotional satisfaction to the person concerned, and whose terms are negotiable and revocable. No longer is marriage a union that is based on the future and welfare of the community. Over the summer the Canadian federal government decided not to contest the ruling of three provincial courts that had all came to the conclusion that denying homosexuals the right to marry violated Canada’s constitution. Also, civil unions afford none of the rights to same sex couples as marriage does to heterosexual couples. In 1996, then President Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act, which denies federal recognition of same sex marriages and allows states to refuse to recognition of them.

But how likely are same sex marriages to occur in the United States? Currently there is a case before the Massachusetts' State Supreme Court to determine if banning same sex marriages in that state violates civil liberty laws. Canada, following the Netherlands and Belgium, is the first country in the western hemisphere to give full-fledged martial rights for gays and lesbians. Despite general tolerance of outed gays and lesbians and same sex civil unions, the country as a whole does not seem ready for full fledged same sex marriages.