Civil marriage is enjoyed by all people in society; all people that is, excluding the ones that find love in the form of their own gender. These people are being denied the basic right of engaging in legally bound matrimony. Laws, such as this one, have been created time and time again, mostly by ignorant bigots, only to be dissolved when finally seen as immoral and unjust in the eyes of someone without hatred in their heart. It should be considered a crime in itself to deny access to an institution that has no one true concrete definition; but instead much diversity, which America has depended on and built from for over a 1000 years. There are at least 1,049 current reasons to accept and grant homosexual marriage in the United States, so why has not anything changed? It was George Bancroft who said, “The fears of one class of men are not the measure of the rights of another,” (200) after all.By forming laws to regulate ones love for another, the message that is being sent to society is that it is all right to discriminate. “By singling out gay and lesbian marriages as a union unacceptable in the eyes of the law, we fuel the fires of ignorance, intolerance, and hatred” (Iowa Rep…1). This message was the same prior to 1967 when interracial marriages were illegal. Another instance of this complete disregard to civil rights was when the class one was born into decided whom one could and could not marry. It was usual practice in Rome to deny marriage between classes. Commoners could not marry aristocrats and so on, legally dividing the ranks into segregated social status. One more type of law obstructing same-sex marriage would be religious ‘law’. While numerous religious groups celebrate same-sex unions, {“Methodists, United Church of Christ, Congregationalists, Reform Jews, Metropolitan Community Church, Unitarian Universalists, Quakers…” (Iowa Rep…2)}, others f...
