Brad Rude POL 1201 Short Essay Assignment 1 Marriage is Not a Right Recently, the issue of marriage equality

has been a very relevant issue in todays society. The United States seems to be evenly split on the issue of gay marriage and whether or not the federal government should recognize it. What is interesting about this is that Alexis de Tocqueville clearly states in Democracy in America that Present-day America exhibits, therefore, in its social state, the strangest phenomenon: men enjoy greater equality of fortune and intelligence or, expressed another way, are as equally strong as in any other country in the world or in any other country in the annals of history (Tocqueville 66). This statement is heavily ironic in that a people who were trying to escape religious persecution founded the United States of America. In and of itself, this statement is not ironic. What is truly ironic is that these people who were trying so hard to escape persecution for what they believed in were the same people who enslaved more than ten million Africans, drove Americas native people from their land and in to camps where they suffered from horrific diseases that went untreated ultimately leading to their inevitable deaths, and continue to institute prejudices on people seeking the very same freedom our ancestors sought. America, without a doubt, is not nearly as free as one may think. With that in mind, it is important to note that the focus of this paper is not on all of Americas wrongdoings in the past, just the present ones. And to be more specific: marriage equality. One must first realize that marriage is not a right. Nowhere in the constitution is marriage ever mentioned. However, it is not uncommon for someone to hear from

another source that illegalizing marriage among homosexuals is unconstitutional. To put it simply, that just is not true. In spite of that fact, that does not mean that one cannot find valid arguments to support marriage equality for everyone using the constitution. One valid argument is disagreeing with the belief that civil unions are the same as marriages. Believing that two different ideas can be equivalent is a throwback to Plessy v Ferguson and Brown v Board of Education. These cases both hinge on the idea that separate can be equal. Living in modern America, one can easily derive that separate is never equal. Therefore, by using legal precedents, the statement that civil unions should be used as a substitution for marriage is undermined. Looking back at constitutional and judicial precedents is not the only way to find valid arguments, though. Sometimes, it is just as easy to reference a dictionary. Arguments are constantly made that the definition of marriage is between one man and one woman and that it is a religious event. Of course, this too is an incorrect statement. The first issue is that marriage is not necessarily a religious event for all who partake. Marriage, technically, is nothing more than a business contract between two people who agree to share their assets and receive certain tax benefits from their union. Using the view that marriage is simply a business contract, sans any religious affiliation, one cannot make the argument that gay marriage is against religious beliefs. Unfortunately, people who fight against marriage equality using religion as their main argument tend to overlook the tragic humor in their ways. As previously mentioned, America was founded by a people who were trying to escape religious persecution, and now the descendants of those same people are persecuting people based on their own religion. The other side of the coin is that marriage is defined as being between one man

and one woman. This is a very simplistic and nave viewpoint. Definitions are constantly changing in modern society. A prime example of this is using the word gay. Initially, gay was used in reference to someone who was feeling rather happy, but now, modern society recognizes the term as a reference to someone who is attracted to the same sex. By adapting some words to new definitions and negating to do the same with other words is hypocritical to say the least. Therefore, one must acknowledge that using the definition argument against marriage equality is ridiculous. In summation, Tocqueville had an incredibly romantic idea of how free America truly was in his time, but it is not hard to identify that there are still major flaws in Americas definition of freedom. Even though marriage is not technically a constitutional right, that does not negate the fact that allowing people to marry whoever they wish is morally right.