Injustice in Gay Marriage
The legalization of LGBT marriage in the US by order of the Supreme Court defines that Gay people should also access marriage rights that are granted to heterosexual couples an obstruction of this right should be acted upon as illegal. This has not been the case. The US is not entirely tolerant of homosexual couples, and many opponents have found ways around the law to deny service to homosexual couples. By using religion and personal beliefs, many of the LGBT community find themselves being denied the service they are now entitled to. The debate on countries that are virtually against the solemnize of same-sex marriage in these days is to consider when homosexual couples are being mistreated, but this is a country where gay people have now the exact same rights as heterosexuals, and that part of the society has been discriminate almost in every part of social life according to religious beliefs, and this should not be the case.
Baker v. Nelson, a Supreme Court case that happened from 1970 to 1971, stipulated that it was not a violation of the US Constitution to prevent marriage of same sex couples and did not go against the 1st, 8th, 9th and 14th amendment in this case. University of Minnesota gay student activists, Richard Baker and James Michael McConnell, applied for a marriage license in Minneapolis.
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The clerk of the Hennepin County District Court, Gerald Nelson, denied the request on the sole ground that the two were of the same sex. The couple filed suit in district court to force Nelson to issue the license. The process of appeal started at a state level, in which the court affirmed that statuses prohibited marriage between persons of the same sex. It was indicated by the court that this decision did not go against the Due Process Clause since procreation and child rearing (bringing up a child) in a biological father/mother precedent, were central to the constitutional protection that was given to marriage.
Minnesota’s court stated that childless marriages presented no more than a theoretical imperfection in the state’s rationale for limiting marriage to different-sex couples. The plaintiffs (Baker) decision to rely on a recent US Supreme Court decision, Loving v. Virginia, was found as a failure to prove a law unconstitutional in the grounds of miscegenation, “in commonsense
and in a constitutional sense, there is a clear distinction between a marital restriction based merely upon race and one based upon the fundamental difference in sex.”
After the case was dismissed by the court without discussion, Minnesota’s decision was taken to the US Supreme Court by Baker and McConnell, where there was a claim of three specific rights being involved: The fundamental right to marry under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment; discrimination based on gender, contrary to the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment; and denial of privacy rights flowing from the Ninth Amendment.
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The US Supreme court ruled against Baker on the basis of “want of a substantial federal question”, ending the trial in October, 1972. Granted, this case does not directly address an issue imposed on the recent legalization of marriage, but creates a perspective on the multiple obstacles that equality of marriage has faced throughout history, with multiple setbacks that indicate the collective thought towards LGBT marriage going through time. In comparison to incidents and cases of obstacles in circumstances after LGBT marriage legalization, the issue has no longer become a question of legality, it has turned into a question of religion.
Moving forward into cases in present time, gay marriage still faces injustice and limitations after its legalization. Several months ago, a marriage license was refused by Kim Davis because of her religious views gay marriage, denying the license to someone that she knows in Rowan County, Kentucky. The county clerk, claimed “My constituents elected me. But the main authority that rules my life is the Lord,” (Davis, 1), stipulating that she would refuse her labour- demanding obligations to stay true to her religion, which indicates that marriage is one man, one woman.
Even if it is entitled by the new laws, LGBT’s marr?age rights will not be easily given by the society. Usage, customs and attitudes take long time to change. Sometimes it necessitates the change of a generation. Today when we look back on African American rights, we notice that it took a long time for the society to change.
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Even the religious beliefs of the people can clash with the new rights of LGBT people. There ?s an ?dea that some bus?nesses w?ll rel?g?ously have ?ssues w?th the new law. As Klein says who owned the bakery with her wife Melissa; “They dropped the ball by not putting in any exemption for religious beliefs.” (Klein, 1)
Although Supreme Court has authorized the same-sex marriages religious authorities are divided about this issue. It should be noted that the religious authorities believe about same-sex marriage are protected by the First Amendment. As I have noted before, time is necessary to change what societies believes. As a society is a dynamic organization, at the end the religious organizations will be obliged to follow this change.
Rev. Dan Matthews, religious officer, started to look for solutions for gay marriage without creating a big price. “”The message I think God has for us today … is God loves love, period,” (Matthews, 1) was a said recently by a religious officer.
After serious discussions Supreme Court has declared, by five to four judge votes, that same-sex marriage is legal in all states. At the same time President Barack Obama praised the Supreme Court ruling as ” Victory for America.” (Obama, 1) In terms of the political divison in opininons regarding the legalization of LGBT marriage, here’s is what the numbers look like. Out of one hundered percent of the democrats of the U.S, sixty-five percent were content with the new law, with only thirty-five percent opposing it. Republicans, on the other hand, have a twenty-two percent of approval, while seventy-eight percent oppose it.
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The issue with denying gay marriage services, or for that case any service to gay people by business owners who say it goes against their beliefs, is a delicate affair. There is a conflict of exercising religious freedom against marriage rights. The issue has left a rift in many areas in the country, where there’s an explicit freedom of exercising religion, which in cases includes denying service to homosexual couples. The claims of many LGBT community members is that these businesses are not doing it out of religious beliefs, but purely to avoid service to customers inside this community.
” No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.” (Kennedy 33).
This quote representation of the progress in mentality the society has towards homosexuality.
The transition has been slow but it is now evident that is the majority who supports gay marriage and homosexuality itself. The argument here is marriage is sacred value LGBT understands and endorces this. This stipulates that the couples with the intentions to marry understand the bond of this ancient tradition. Allowing LGBT couples to marry legally would give them and society a sense of union and community. This would also indicate that the LGBT community is at the same level of the rest of the people.
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The follow?ng article, like many others, is showing about the recent Supreme Court case that addresses the LGBT Rights decision that will take time to be accepted by society. This law seems to be taken much more time the others. Society is trying to defend its rights coming from the article on religious issues. In this article, a lesbian couple wishing to have a photo taken is refused by a local photographer based on her religious beliefs. It seems that the LGBT rights issue will push the Supreme Court to find a way to reconcile the First amendment with this new issue.
As all new laws got some reaction from institutions the Catholic adoption issue creates controversies with the new LGBT rights because the Catholic Church’s religious beliefs prevents them to permit adoption of Catholic children by LGBT couples. These reactions are totally normal as of today but as all institutions during the history the Church also if he wants to go on, will need quickly to find away with this new LGBT issue reconciliation. As all religious institutions main objective is the happiness of all men, I strongly believe that the Church will reform itself sooner or later.
Furthermore, there is a strong institutional refusal for LGBT rights regarding institutions in the public and private sector. The religious institutions are trying to do their best to find ways to evade the Supreme Court decisions. But as the majority of society backs up these new rights, no religious institution will be able to go on basing their refusal on religious beliefs. Sooner or later they will be obeying laws as we are in a constitutional country, which puts forth since its origin, the Law of the Land, in this case, the Constitution.
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The separation of church and state is a concept that may not seem correlated to the recent injustices in the gay marriage front, but it certainly leaves something to think about. As previously mentioned, many of the cases of LGBT couples being denied marriage service have to do with the religious belief of the institution of marriage in the eyes of religion. Th?s means that marriage licenses are denied sometimes because of the viewpoint of the person that expedites the licenses towards marriage. This is mainly being that most religions teach marriage to be a sacred vow for life between man and woman, but even in that concept, divorce happens, infidelity happens, which comes to show that marriage might not be held as precious by some heterosexual couples as it is by the ever striving gay couples. Furthermore, the states laws are a separation of religious practices, which would discredit the idea of constantly denying service on the basis of religions. Many of these people need to have into consideration the difference between the obligation that is imposed by a new law, and therefore the government, and a personal belief that creates a rift for homosexuals, making them feels as if they were lesser than heterosexuals.
“The debate over Proposition 8 in California included assertions that clergy and faith communities would be forced against their will to solemnize same-sex marriages.42 Although such a coercive policy is politically inconceivable, it could be designed in a constitutionally defensible way. For example, the government could treat the celebration of civil marriage as a public accommodation, and prohibit discrimination by providers of that service. Or, the government could impose a condition on its grant of the authority to solemnize marriages, requiring the celebrant to be willing to serve all couples.” (Lupu, 25)
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This quote is a representation of some of the pathways that homophobic and sexist people take, let alone religious people. If a person claims that their religion intercedes with the service they can prov?de to LGBT people, there’s nothing much to be pursued, due to the protection of having freedom or religion, and therefore, its individual interpretation. Homosexual rights are being v?olated on the bas?s of a person’s perception and posture in their religion, which is a hard thing to combat against, reason why there’s not much to do in favor of the leverage the SCUS ruling has.
Not only is it necessary to establish a separation of the regulations that religion can intercede in, but its also important to create an awareness that the law is the law. The injustices that homosexuals suffer are mainly out of personal, and not religious belief, many times there’s no one advocating against homophobic actions, and th?s prevents the LGBT community from being the same as us.
The progress of th?s country has shown that the most popular belief and endorsement are for homosexuals to be at the level of heterosexuals. It is in a way, a healing process that establishes the capacity of society to move on from judgment and segregation based on sexual orientation. People that are just purely oriented to reject different lifestyles have found a way to do it, and the government needs to intervene to prevent further transgressions. For soc?ety to move forward ?n the most un?fy?ng of aspects, the soc?al concepts that have been put ?n the past of segregat?on ?n many aspects, needs to be broken down.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
*Lupu, Ira C. “Same-Sex Equality and Religious Freedom.” Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy, Aug.-Sept. 2010. Web. 09 Mar. 2016. .
* “Supreme Court Declares Same-Sex Marriage Legal In All 50 States.” NPR. NPR, June-July 2015. Web. 09 Mar. 2016. http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/06/26/417717613/supreme-court-rules-all-states-must-allow-same-sex-marriages.
*”Supreme Court Declares Same-Sex Marriage Legal In All 50 States.” NPR. NPR, June-July 2015. Web. 09 Mar. 2016. .
*Johnson, Luke. “Supreme Court Declines To Hear New Mexico Gay Wedding Photography Case.” The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 26 June 2015. Web. 09 Mar. 2016. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/07/supreme-court-gay-wedding-photography_n_5104699.html.
*Wilson, Robin Fretwell. Matters of Conscience: Lessons for Same-Sex Marriage from the Healthcase Contex. 5 Sept. 2008. Web. 9 Mar. 2016.
*Polikoff, Nancy D. “Equality and Justice for Lesbian and Gay Families and Relationships.” 7 June 2009. Web. 9 Mar. 2016. .
* Peter Wood. “Debating Same-Sex Marriage.” N.p., 23 Mar. 2011. Web. 13 Mar. 2016. .
