Sample Op-Ed Piece in Support of the Right to Marry for Same-Sex Couples
Civil marriage is a gateway to equality: the right to medical decision-making for a loved one, parenting rights, access to insurance, inheritance protections, immigration rights, and hundreds of other legal protections and responsibilities. The act of getting married is invested with public, historical, and spiritual significance, and is emotionally charged for the individuals involved, as well as society. Until lesbian and gay couples have the freedom to marry, discrimination in civil marriage will remain a profound barrier to achieving complete equality for lesbians and gay men.
Look how far we’ve come. Considering it took until 1967 for the United States Supreme Court finally to overturn state bans on interracial marriage, it has been just a historical eye blink since a Hawaii court found that there is no good reason to ban gay people from civil marriage, thus opening this national dialogue. Since then, two-thirds of the public have told national pollsters that it is inevitable that same-sex couples will be able to marry, and a majority of Americans now support extending to lesbian and gay couples at least the same protections and benefits already given to married couples. Last year, Vermont made history by instituting civil unions for lesbian and gay couples, offering state-level protections parallel to marriage (though separate and unequal). Such progress, however, occurs against a backdrop in which the far right continues to try to shut down this crucial discussion with pre-emptive discriminatory laws and ballot measures. Anti-gay efforts on state ballots this past November included an extremist measure in Nebraska to ban all family protections as well as any future legal marriages for gay couples and a measure in Nevada to change the state constitution to define marriage as only between a man and a woman.
The discussion about marriage needs to move forward rather than shut down, as right-wing groups and legislators have tried to do. More Americans need to talk over these issues with families, friends, and even those with whom they disagree. When they do, they will see – as courts in Hawaii and Vermont have – that there is no good reason for denying lesbian and gay couples the commitment, protections, and responsibilities of civil marriage.
