Everyone is aware of marriage. Marriage is a commitment between two individuals. For many years, only minority groups or countries keep up the practice of same-sex marriage. Same-sex marriage is the exercise of marriage between two women and two men. This marriage has often become one of the controversial issues all around the world as it seen from religion, political and cultural aspects which lead to dispute from many scholars before and up until now. Added up, with abundance clashes of opinion between one and another among opponents and supporters. For instances, the country that already legalized same-sex marriage in Australia, United States of America and Columbia. However, this matter now has decided by many nations and races that this marriage institution actually met the expectation of human rights. There will be many benefits and fairness when same-sex marriage is legalized such as, reduction in suicide attempts, helps in boosting the economy and LGBT couples make a good parent and free to enjoy the same conveniences as heterosexual couples.
The main advantage of legalizing same-sex marriage is reducing suicide attempts. When gay and lesbian couples have the right to marry one another, teens in that state are less likely to attempt suicide, found an analysis of data collected consistently over 17 years from 47 states. While this relationship might seem odd initially, the findings make sense in light of the fact that the biggest drops in suicide attempts occurred among LGBT adolescents. “Furthermore, we found that the effects of legalization persisted two years after legalization, suggesting that social and political backlash does not have the effect of worsening mental health outcomes in this window,” wrote Julia Raifman, Sc.D., of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, and her colleagues in the JAMA Pediatrics study published February 20. One study, published in Pediatrics in 2011, showed that LGB youths were 20 percent more likely to attempt suicide if they were living in unsupportive environments.
Raifman said the study suggested a lot of ideas for further research on how different environments can add to, or detract from, the risk for suicide. One of the biggest reasons for the higher suicide risk in LGBT youth is a stigma, whether it’s rejection from family, friends or society in general or it’s an internalization of homophobia. Suicide is the second-leading cause of death for youth between 15 and 24 years old, and the rate is considerably increased among youth who identify as gay, lesbian or bisexual. Clearly, by legalizing same-sex marriage reduce the rate of suicide attempts.
The second advantage, same-sex marriage helps in boosting the economy by bringing prof it to federal, states and local government. According to Blake Ellis, since gay marriage was legalized in New York, marriage license fees, local celebrations, and wedding-related purchases have boosted New York City’s economy by $259 million, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Chr istine Quinn announced Tuesday. “Marriage equality has made our City more open, inclusive and free — and it has also helped to create jobs and support our economy,” Mayor Bloomberg said in a statement. More than 8,200 same-sex marriage licenses have been issued over the past year, representing more than 10% of the 75,000 licenses issued in the city, according to a survey conducted by the City Clerk’s Office and NYC & Company, the city’s tourism and marketing organization.
In addition, in 2012, the Williams Institute at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) found that in the first five years after Massachusetts legalized gay marriage in 2004, same-sex wedding expenditures (such as venue rental, wedding cakes, etc.) added $111 million to the state’s economy. A 2014 series of reports also by the Williams Institute estimated that legalizing same-sex marriage would boost the economies of the 11 US states studied by a total of $723 million over three years. The Congressional Budget Office estimated in 2004 that federally-recognized gay marriage would cut the budget deficit by around $450 million a year. Clearly, gay wedding mean big business.
The third advantage is LGBT or gay couples make good parents. Children of same-sex couples fare better when it comes to physical health and social well-being than children in the general population, according to researchers at the University of Melbourne in Australia. “It’s often suggested that children with same-sex parents have poorer outcomes because they’re missing a parent of a particular sex. But research my colleagues and I published in the journal BMC Public Health shows this isn’t the case,” lead researcher Simon Crouch wrote on the Conversation. Crouch and his team surveyed 315 same-sex parents with a total of 500 children across Australia. About 80 percent of the kids had female parents and about 18 percent had male parents, the study states.
A study published in Pediatrics on June 7, 2010, found that children of lesbian mothers were rated higher than children of heterosexual parents in social and academic competence and had fewer social problems. A July 2010 study found that children of gay fathers were “as well-adjusted as those adopted by heterosexual parents.” As former Washington Post columnist Ezra Klein wrote, “We should be begging gay couples to adopt children. We should see this as a great boon that gay marriage could bring to kids who need nothing more than two loving parents.” Thus, gay couples make good parents.
The fairness that homosexual couples should be getting is free to enjoy the same conveniences as heterosexual couples. Needless to say, most couples marry for love and the desire to reinforce the personal commitment they have made to each other. Most also want the public statement of commitment and support that marriage offers. The intangible benefits that marriage offers many families include clarity, security, structure, dignity, spiritual significance, and an expectation of permanence, dedication, and stability. Like most non-gay couples, most same-sex couples share these aspirations and needs. The advantages are including inheritance rights if a partner passes away, the alternative of filing a joint tax return to lessen a tax burden, hospital visitation during an illness, access to family health coverage, US residency and family unification for partners from another country, and bereavement leave that only available to married couples stated in Congressional Budget Office, 2014.
In addition, according to a 2004 report from the U.S. General Accounting Office, there are at least 1,138 tangible benefits, protections, rights, and responsibilities that marriage brings couples and their kids—and that’s just at the federal level. Add in state and local law, and the policies of businesses, employers, universities, and other institutions, and it is clear that the denial of marriage to couples and their kids makes a substantial impact on every area of life, from raising kids, building a life together, and caring for one another, to retirement, death, and inheritance. Most of these cannot be secured by private agreement or through lawyers.
In conclusion, same-sex marriage should be legalized due to where the fairness has been proved, turning a moral right and decreasing not only the divorce yet it reducing the suicide rates swiftly. Although some people believed that this organization is harmful and must be opposed, examining the good sides of legalizing same-sex marriage proves otherwise. Thus, same-sex marriage can affect in reducing suicide attempts, boosting the economy, children can have a parent and make the LGBT couples enjoy the same conveniences as heterosexual couples.