Should same-sex marriage be legal?

Subject classification: this is a law learning projects resource.

By marriage we mean the legal union, not the religious ceremony.

Same-sex marriage should be legal

Argument for Forbidding a gay couple from marriage when it's explicitly available to a heterosexual couple is preventing their freedom of expression.
Argument for Forbidding gay marriage is making their union less valuable than another's by preventing it from reaching an official level.
Argument for Every human is equal and free to express his or her sexuality.
- Objection This debate isn't about the right to have sex or otherwise express one's sexuality towards someone of the same sex. It's about marriage, a legal figure.
  - Objection Marriage is an expression of sexuality as much as it is a legal statement.
    - What about celibate couples?
Argument for Marriage is no longer based on complementary, gender-based roles, and therefore the gender of participants no longer matters.
- Objection This is not the case in many jurisdictions.

Argument against Marriage has been understood as the union or legal contract between a man and a woman for millennia. If gay people want equal rights, they may have them, but there is no need to force the meaning of such a long-lasting institution. New laws and institutions may be created to accommodate their civil requests, without upsetting traditions and the people who support them.
- Objection Social concepts change, usually not because they are 'forced' or because they are attacks on the traditional, but because society evolves. Traditions are abandoned, changed, or conserved throughout history. No one demands you wear boots with buckles out of respect to those who follow the traditions of Pilgrim dress. Gay marriage is no more an attack on heterosexuality than modern dress is an attack on Pilgrims; or no more than non-Christians marrying are an attack on Christian marriage.
- Objection The objection here seems to be the use of the term "marriage". If we called it "garriage" would that help? In the end if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and swims like a duck then call it a duck. How does a gay marriage devalue or affect in anyway a hetero marriage when they are totally de-coupled event?

Argument for Aside from things such as civic unions, government should get out of the marriage business. Let individuals internally validate the quality of their personal relationships, or perhaps also their communities. There are people who are married who might as well not be; and there are people who are married in all but designation.

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