"The Law is reason, free from passion." -Aristotle

I can’t move on from this argument. It’s personal for me, in many ways. I won’t stop.

If you believe marriage is a religious institution and a union from God, between a man and a woman, and something the government should not regulate, go ahead and continue to believe that. Fine.
But first, you will need to stop the benefits that come from marriage. You can’t be covered under your spouse’s health care. You can’t receive their retirement pensions when they die. You can’t make decisions for them when they become incapable of it. You will need your spouse’s family’s permission to visit your loved one if he or she is in the hospital. You can’t apply for a mortgage together. Or lease an apartment together. (So be prepared, because if your spouse has the mortgage or lease in his or her name and then they die, you will be evicted from your home or apartment.) If your spouse becomes sick or injured and you need to take time off of work, you’re not covered since the government no longer can create laws about marriage. When your spouse dies, you can’t make any funeral arrangements because you’re technically not “kin.” You can no longer get that tax benefit for being married, so you’ll each pay more taxes to Uncle Sam.

I could go on, but I’m sure you get my point.

Maybe at one point marriage was a religious institution. Maybe at some point it was something that only mattered within the church. But, the moment the government became involved it became a civil issue.

There are over 1000 benefits afforded to married individuals, and none have to do with the Church. None of them have to do with any Biblical commands or religious doctrines. They are all civil issues. So marriage is no longer a religious institution, it’s a civil institution.

Now, since I think I’ve made my point in saying that marriage is a civil issue, let’s talk about why same-sex couples should not be denied the right to marry and establish the kinship that marriage establishes.

In the Declaration of Independence, it was declared, “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Our founding fathers acknowledged that all are equal and we have the Right to pursue happiness. What is marrying another woman is what makes me happy? It’s not harming anyone if it’s a consensual agreement between two adults.
Liberty as defined by Miriam-Webster is “the positive enjoyment of various social, political, or economic rights and privilege.” If I’m building my life with another woman we should be allowed to enjoy the economic rights, the political rights, and the social rights that marriage brings.

I’m sure the Founding Fathers never imagined that we’d be arguing over whether two men could marry one another or two women could marry one another, but I’m also sure, our Founding Fathers would be disappointed in the will of certain groups to write discrimination into our Constitution.

“We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
Our founding fathers established in the preamble to the Constitution the mission with promoting the general welfare. The general welfare of an individual would be allowing that individual to marry any other consenting, non-relative adult that he or she pleases. And as you can see in an earlier paragraph, there are many legal benefits given to married individuals that help protect each other and help in the welfare of those two individuals. And again, in the Constitution, we have the idea of liberty and it’s blessings being secure for ourselves and those that come after us.

Article IV, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution states, “Full faith and credit shall be given in each state to the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every other state. And the Congress may by general laws prescribe the manner in which such acts, records, and proceedings shall be proved, and the effect thereof.”
Many people say that same-sex couples should be given domestic partnerships or civil unions, but these are only recognized in the state that they are issued, which is actually a violation of the U.S. Constitution as you can see here. And technically, if a same-sex couple gets married in Massachusetts, all states should honor it.

Amendment 1. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
If marriage is a religious institution then the government, Federal or State cannot make any laws about it; the Government should step aside and have no regulation over it. But my guess is that since there are over 1000 legal, government benefits to marriage, the Government doesn’t view marriage as an establishment of religion. If marriage is a religious institution, then you should be lobbying to take marriage away from the government regulating it in any way, not just regulating it to ban same-sex couples from marrying.

Amendment XIV. Section 1. “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
According to the 14th Amendment, a state cannot make any law that would reduce or take away the privileges of an individual or a group. The passing of Prop 8 in California and the other anti-gay amendments do “abridge the privileges” of U.S. citizens. The passing of amendments in Arkansas and older laws in Florida that deny same-sex couples or gay individuals from adopting children is a clear example of a state denying U.S Citizens a privilege.
The last part of the Amendment says that states cannot “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” The benefits of marriage offer protection to individuals, especially with regards to property and estate issues, financial issues, like when one spouse dies the other can keep receiving any pensions, retirement benefits, or military benefits. Because marriage offers many protections, the Government, Federal and States cannot deny it to same-sex couples.

I think and feel that the U.S Constitution is clear in saying that rights and privileges cannot be denied to certain individuals or specific groups. I think that because marriage is the way it is in the U.S., the government cannot deny that establishment to individuals, because its bars same-sex couples from receiving equal protection, which violates our Constitution.

Some will argue that is why there is a need for an amendment to the Constitution to specify marriage as being between one man and one woman. G.W. Bush endorses a Federal Amendment to limit marriage, as does Sarah Palin, and several other conservative leaders, religious leaders, and conservative individuals. While that seems like a good idea, according to our own Constitution, and how I understand it, it cannot happen.

The institution of marriage is not specifically defined within the U.S Constitution and therefore left up to the states, according to Amendment X. "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people." Since marriage is not determined in the U.S. Constitution, it’s left to the States and an Amendment to the Constitution about it would be the U.S. Constitution contradicting itself. But the Constitution cannot contradict itself, according to Article VI. “This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.”
I hear you all now saying that California and all the states that have passed their own laws defining marriage as something between one man and one woman has their right to do so because of this amendment. Article VI clears this up, too. The U.S. Constitution is the “law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound” to it. And we can step back to Amendment 14 when it says that a state cannot deny privileges or rights to U.S. citizens.

Same-sex couples are given the rights to marry one another in the U.S. Constitution. It may not have been explicitly stated, but our founding fathers wrote the Constitution, and it’s been amended in the subsequent years, to protect the citizens of this country, and that includes same-sex couples. (I should rewrite that sentence.)

(I used an article by John S. Dixon, "Homosexual (Same-sex) Marriages: An Interpretation of the U.S. Constitution" as presented on ReligiousTolerance.org.
I used many of his idea and a few of my own.)