Same-sex marriage is a pretty perennial issue, and it's the second most annoying of all the perennial third rail topics. There's always an extremely bitter fight between "SAME-SEX COUPLES FOR ALL!!!" and "CHRISTIAN VALUES FOR ALL!!!" (whatever that means).

Before I start, I'd like to make one thing clear.
If you make homosexuality illegal, will it stop happening? No.



Whether or not you believe in allowing same-sex couples to be married, there is an even bigger question. Why should the government care what people do in their personal lives?

Even better: what right do YOU have to tell someone else what they can or can't do?

I mean seriously, why do you need to have a license granted by a judge in your local government as proof of marriage? If you don't have that, how come people can't officially consider you to be married?

Why are there so many financial incentives (tax breaks, for example) that you can only get if you're married?

What right does the government have to determine which values of religious institutions it can and can't follow?

Why do we have such complicated adoption laws? The stupidest people living in the worst conditions have as many children as they possibly can, and that's not much of a problem. However, adoptions are almost impossible unless the people adopting are married, heterosexual, upper middle class, and a whole list of other things.

Why do we even need complicated inheritance laws?

Or rather, why do we need complicated laws at all?



If you're a Christian and you have your own idea of marriage (which is inconsistent considering many biblical marriages were one man with many women), do you have the right to impose that on anybody else? You might justify a Christian state by saying that the Founding Fathers were Christians. No, they were mostly Deists and Freemasons.

Freedom of religion is part of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, and most of the 50 states also have freedom of religion written in as a fundamental human right.


To the alternative relationships out there:
Why are you trying to get the government to grant you rights? If you believe you have the right to get married, then that right has to come from you. You don't have to be given rights. You have them already, and the government just refuses to recognize some of your rights. THAT is your real problem.



So how do you end the debate about whether or not same-sex marriage should be legal? By asking serious questions about whether or not the government has any right to interfere with people's relationships at all.



Think outside the box.