should gay marriage be legalized in the country argumentative essay

Should Gay Marriage Be Legal?

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On June 26, 2015, the US Supreme Court ruled that gay marriage is a right protected by the US Constitution in all 50 states. Prior to their decision, same-sex marriage was already legal in 37 states and Washington DC, but was banned in the remaining 13. US public opinion had shifted significantly over the years, from 27% approval of gay marriage in 1996 to 55% in 2015, the year it became legal throughout the United States, to 61% in 2019.

Proponents of legal gay marriage contend that gay marriage bans are discriminatory and unconstitutional, and that same-sex couples should have access to all the benefits enjoyed by different-sex couples.

Opponents contend that marriage has traditionally been defined as being between one man and one woman, and that marriage is primarily for procreation. Read more background…

Pro & Con Arguments

Pro 1 To deny some people the option to marry would be discriminatory and would create a second class of citizens. Same-sex couples should have access to the same benefits enjoyed by heterosexual married couples. On July 25, 2014 Miami-Dade County Circuit Court Judge Sarah Zabel ruled Florida’s gay marriage ban unconstitutional and stated that the ban “serves only to hurt, to discriminate, to deprive same-sex couples and their families of equal dignity, to label and treat them as second-class citizens, and to deem them unworthy of participation in one of the fundamental institutions of our society.” [ 105 ] As well as discrimination based on sexual orientation, gay marriage bans discriminated based on one’s sex. As David S. Cohen, JD, Associate Professor at the Drexel University School of Law, explained, “Imagine three people—Nancy, Bill, and Tom… Nancy, a woman, can marry Tom, but Bill, a man, cannot… Nancy can do something (marry Tom) that Bill cannot, simply because Nancy is a woman and Bill is a man.” [ 122 ] Over 1,000 benefits, rights and protections are available to married couples in federal law alone, including hospital visitation, filing a joint tax return to reduce a tax burden, access to family health coverage, US residency and family unification for partners from another country, and bereavement leave and inheritance rights if a partner dies. [ 6 ] [ 86 ] [ 95 ] Married couples also have access to protections if the relationship ends, such as child custody, spousal or child support, and an equitable division of property. [ 93 ] Married couples in the US armed forces are offered health insurance and other benefits unavailable to domestic partners. [ 125 ] The IRS and the US Department of Labor also recognize married couples, for the purpose of granting tax, retirement and health insurance benefits. [ 126 ] An Oct. 2, 2009 analysis by the New York Times estimated that same-sex couples denied marriage benefits incurred an additional $41,196 to $467,562 in expenses over their lifetimes compared with married heterosexual couples. [ 7 ] Additionally, legal same-sex marriage comes with mental and physical health benefits. The American Psychological Association, American Psychiatric Association, and others concluded that legal gay marriage gives couples “access to the social support that already facilitates and strengthens heterosexual marriages, with all of the psychological and physical health benefits associated with that support.” [ 47 ] A study found that same-sex married couples were “significantly less distressed than lesbian, gay, and bisexual persons not in a legally recognized relationship.” [ 113 ] A 2010 analysis found that after their states had banned gay marriage, gay, lesbian and bisexual people suffered a 37% increase in mood disorders, a 42% increase in alcohol-use disorders, and a 248% increase in generalized anxiety disorders. [ 69 ] Read More

Pro 2 Gay marriages bring financial gain to federal, state, and local governments, and boost the economy. The Congressional Budget Office estimated in 2004 that federally-recognized gay marriage would cut the budget deficit by around $450 million a year. [ 89 ] In July 2012 New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that gay marriage had contributed $259 million to the city’s economy in just a year since the practice became legal there in July 2011. [ 43 ] Government revenue from marriage comes from marriage licenses, higher income taxes in some circumstances (the so-called “marriage penalty”), and decreases in costs for state benefit programs. [ 4 ] 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. [ 114 ] Read More

Pro 3 Legal marriage is a secular institution that should not be limited by religious objections to same-sex marriage. Religious institutions can decline to marry gay and lesbian couples if they wish, but they should not dictate marriage laws for society at large. As explained by People for the American Way, “As a legal matter, marriage is a civil institution… Marriage is also a religious institution, defined differently by different faiths and congregations. In America, the distinction can get blurry because states permit clergy to carry out both religious and civil marriage in a single ceremony. Religious Right leaders have exploited that confusion by claiming that granting same-sex couples equal access to civil marriage would somehow also redefine the religious institution of marriage… this is grounded in falsehood and deception.” [ 132 ] Nancy Cott, PhD, testified in Perry v. Schwarzenegger that “[c]ivil law has always been supreme in defining and regulating marriage.” [ 41 ] Read More

Pro 4 The concept of “traditional marriage” has changed over time, and the idea that the definition of marriage has always been between one man and one woman is historically inaccurate. Harvard University historian Nancy F. Cott stated that until two centuries ago, “monogamous households were a tiny, tiny portion” of the world’s population, and were found only in “Western Europe and little settlements in North America.” [ 106 ] Official unions between same-sex couples, indistinguishable from marriages except for gender, are believed by some scholars to have been common until the 13th Century in many countries, with the ceremonies performed in churches and the union sealed with a kiss between the two parties. [ 106 ] Polygamy has been widespread throughout history, according to Brown University political scientist Rose McDermott, PhD. [ 106 ] [ 110 ] Read More

Pro 5 Gay marriage is a civil right protected by the US Constitution’s commitments to liberty and equality, and is an internationally recognized human right for all people. The NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), on May 21, 2012, named same-sex marriage as “one of the key civil rights struggles of our time.” [ 61 ] In 1967 the US Supreme Court unanimously confirmed in Loving v. Virginia that marriage is “one of the basic civil rights of man.” [60] In 2014, the White House website listed same-sex marriage amongst a selection of civil rights, along with freedom from employment discrimination, equal pay for women, and fair sentencing for minority criminals. [ 118 ] The US Supreme Court ruled 7-2 in the 1974 case Cleveland Board of Education v. LaFleur that the “freedom of personal choice in matters of marriage and family life is one of the liberties protected by the Due Process Clause” of the US Constitution. US District Judge Vaughn Walker wrote on Aug. 4, 2010 that Prop. 8 in California banning gay marriage was “unconstitutional under both the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses.” [ 41 ] The Due Process Clause in both the Fifth and 14th Amendments of the US Constitution states that no person shall be “deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” [ 111 ] The Equal Protection Clause in the 14th Amendment states that no state shall “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” [ 112 ] Since 1888 the US Supreme Court has declared at least 14 times that marriage is a fundamental right for all. [ 3 ] Article 16 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights guarantees “men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion… the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.” [ 103 ] Amnesty International states that “this non-discrimination principle has been interpreted by UN treaty bodies and numerous inter-governmental human rights bodies as prohibiting discrimination based on gender or sexual orientation. Non-discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation has therefore become an internationally recognized principle.” [ 104 ] Read More

Pro 6 Marriage is not only for procreation, otherwise infertile couples or couples not wishing to have children would be prevented from marrying. Ability or desire to create offspring has never been a qualification for marriage. From 1970 through 2012 roughly 30% of all US households were married couples without children, and in 2012, married couples without children outnumbered married couples with children by 9%. [ 96 ] 6% of married women aged 15-44 are infertile, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. [ 97 ] In a 2010 Pew Research Center survey, both married and unmarried people rated love, commitment, and companionship higher than having children as “very important” reasons to get married, and only 44% of unmarried people and 59% of married people rated having children as a very important reason. [ 42 ] As US Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan noted, a marriage license would be granted to a couple in which the man and woman are both over the age of 55, even though “there are not a lot of children coming out of that marriage.” [ 88 ] Read More

Con 1 The institution of marriage has traditionally been defined as being between a man and a woman. Civil unions and domestic partnerships could provide the protections and benefits gay couples need without changing the definition of marriage. John F. Harvey, late Catholic priest, wrote in July 2009 that “Throughout the history of the human race the institution of marriage has been understood as the complete spiritual and bodily communion of one man and one woman.” [ 18 ] [ 109 ] In upholding gay marriage bans in Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee on Nov. 6, 2014, 6th US District Court of Appeals Judge Jeffrey S. Sutton wrote that “marriage has long been a social institution defined by relationships between men and women. So long defined, the tradition is measured in millennia, not centuries or decades. So widely shared, the tradition until recently had been adopted by all governments and major religions of the world.” [ 117 ] In the Oct. 15, 1971 decision Baker v. Nelson, the Supreme Court of Minnesota found that “the institution of marriage as a union of man and woman, uniquely involving the procreation and rearing of children within a family, is as old as the book of Genesis.” [ 49 ] Privileges available to couples in civil unions and domestic partnerships can include health insurance benefits, inheritance without a will, the ability to file state taxes jointly, and hospital visitation rights. [ 155 ] [ 156 ] New laws could enshrine other benefits for civil unions and domestic partnerships that would benefit same-sex couple as well as heterosexual couples who do not want to get married. 2016 presidential candidate and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina stated that civil unions are adequate as an equivalent to marriage: “Benefits are being bestowed to gay couples [in civil unions]… I believe we need to respect those who believe that the word marriage has a spiritual foundation… Why can’t we respect and tolerate that while at the same time saying government cannot bestow benefits unequally.” [ 157 ] 43rd US President George W. Bush expressed his support for same-sex civil unions while in office: “I don’t think we should deny people rights to a civil union, a legal arrangement, if that’s what a state chooses to do so… I strongly believe that marriage ought to be defined as between a union between a man and a woman. Now, having said that, states ought to be able to have the right to pass laws that enable people to be able to have rights like others.” [158] Read More

Con 2 Marriage is for procreation. Same sex couples should be prohibited from marriage because they cannot produce children together. The purpose of marriage should not shift away from producing and raising children to adult gratification. [ 19 ] A California Supreme Court ruling from 1859 stated that “the first purpose of matrimony, by the laws of nature and society, is procreation.” [ 90 ] Nobel Prize-winning philosopher Bertrand Russell stated that “it is through children alone that sexual relations become important to society, and worthy to be taken cognizance of by a legal institution.” [ 91 ] Court papers filed in July 2014 by attorneys defending Arizona’s gay marriage ban stated that “the State regulates marriage for the primary purpose of channeling potentially procreative sexual relationships into enduring unions for the sake of joining children to both their mother and their father… Same-sex couples can never provide a child with both her biological mother and her biological father.” [ 98 ] Contrary to the pro gay marriage argument that some different-sex couples cannot have children or don’t want them, even in those cases there is still the potential to produce children. Seemingly infertile heterosexual couples sometimes produce children, and medical advances may allow others to procreate in the future. Heterosexual couples who do not wish to have children are still biologically capable of having them, and may change their minds. [ 98 ] Read More

Con 3 Gay marriage has accelerated the assimilation of gays into mainstream heterosexual culture to the detriment of the homosexual community. The gay community has created its own vibrant culture. By reducing the differences in opportunities and experiences between gay and heterosexual people, this unique culture may cease to exist. Lesbian activist M.V. Lee Badgett, PhD, Director of the Center for Public Policy and Administration at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, stated that for many gay activists “marriage means adopting heterosexual forms of family and giving up distinctively gay family forms and perhaps even gay and lesbian culture.” [14] Paula Ettelbrick, JD, Professor of Law and Women’s Studies, wrote in 1989, “Marriage runs contrary to two of the primary goals of the lesbian and gay movement: the affirmation of gay identity and culture and the validation of many forms of relationships.” [15] Read More

Con 4 Marriage is an outmoded, oppressive institution that should have been weakened, not expanded. LGBT activist collective Against Equality stated, “Gay marriage apes hetero privilege… [and] increases economic inequality by perpetuating a system which deems married beings more worthy of the basics like health care and economic rights.” [ 84 ] The leaders of the Gay Liberation Front in New York said in July 1969, “We expose the institution of marriage as one of the most insidious and basic sustainers of the system. The family is the microcosm of oppression.” [ 16 ] Queer activist Anders Zanichkowsky stated in June 2013 that the then campaign for gay marriage “intentionally and maliciously erases and excludes so many queer people and cultures, particularly trans and gender non-conforming people, poor queer people, and queer people in non-traditional families… marriage thinks non-married people are deviant and not truly deserving of civil rights.” [ 127 ] Read More

Con 5 Gay marriage is contrary to the word of God and is incompatible with the beliefs, sacred texts, and traditions of many religious groups. The Bible, in Leviticus 18:22, states: “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination,” thus condemning homosexual relationships. [ 120 ] The Catholic Church, United Methodist Church, Southern Baptist Convention, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, National Association of Evangelicals, and American Baptist Churches USA all oppose same-sex marriage. [ 119 ] According to a July 31, 2003 statement from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and approved by Pope John Paul II, marriage “was established by the Creator with its own nature, essential properties and purpose. No ideology can erase from the human spirit the certainty that marriage exists solely between a man and a woman.” [ 54 ] Pope Benedict stated in Jan. 2012 that gay marriage threatened “the future of humanity itself.” [ 145 ] Two orthodox Jewish groups, the Orthodox Agudath Israel of America and the Orthodox Union, also oppose gay marriage, as does mainstream Islam. [ 13 ] [ 119 ] In Islamic tradition, several hadiths (passages attributed to the Prophet Muhammad) condemn gay and lesbian relationships, including the sayings “When a man mounts another man, the throne of God shakes,” and “Sihaq [lesbian sex] of women is zina [illegitimate sexual intercourse].” [ 121 ] Read More

Con 6 Homosexuality is immoral and unnatural, and, therefore, same sex marriage is immoral and unnatural. J. Matt Barber, Associate Dean for Online Programs at Liberty University School of Law, stated, “Every individual engaged in the homosexual lifestyle, who has adopted a homosexual identity, they know, intuitively, that what they’re doing is immoral, unnatural, and self-destructive, yet they thirst for that affirmation.” [ 149 ] A 2003 set of guidelines signed by Pope John Paul II stated: “There are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God’s plan for marriage and family… Marriage is holy, while homosexual acts go against the natural moral law.” [ 147 ] Former Arkansas governor and Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee stated that gay marriage is “inconsistent with nature and nature’s law.” [ 148 ] J. Matt Barber, Associate Dean for Online Programs at Liberty University School of Law, stated, “Every individual engaged in the homosexual lifestyle, who has adopted a homosexual identity, they know, intuitively, that what they’re doing is immoral, unnatural, and self-destructive, yet they thirst for that affirmation.” [ 149 ] A 2003 set of guidelines signed by Pope John Paul II stated: “There are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God’s plan for marriage and family… Marriage is holy, while homosexual acts go against the natural moral law.” [ 147 ] Read More

Did You Know?
1. The world's first legal gay marriage ceremony took place in the Netherlands on Apr. 1, 2001, just after midnight. The four couples, one female and three male, were married in a televised ceremony officiated by the mayor of Amsterdam. [ ]
2. On May 17, 2004, the first legal gay marriage in the United States was performed in Cambridge, MA between Tanya McCloskey, a massage therapist, and Marcia Kadish, an employment manager at an engineering firm. [ ]
3. The June 26, 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges US Supreme Court ruling made gay marriage legal in all 50 US states. [ ]
4. An estimated 293,000 American same-sex couples have married since June 26, 2015, bringing the total number of married same-sex couples to about 513,000 in the US. [ ]
5. On May 26, 2020, Costa Rica became the first Central American country to legalize same-sex marriage. [ ]

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Evidence is clear on the benefits of legalising same-sex marriage

PhD Candidate, School of Arts and Social Sciences, James Cook University

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Ryan Anderson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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Emotive arguments and questionable rhetoric often characterise debates over same-sex marriage. But few attempts have been made to dispassionately dissect the issue from an academic, science-based perspective.

Regardless of which side of the fence you fall on, the more robust, rigorous and reliable information that is publicly available, the better.

There are considerable mental health and wellbeing benefits conferred on those in the fortunate position of being able to marry legally. And there are associated deleterious impacts of being denied this opportunity.

Although it would be irresponsible to suggest the research is unanimous, the majority is either noncommittal (unclear conclusions) or demonstrates the benefits of same-sex marriage.

Further reading: Conservatives prevail to hold back the tide on same-sex marriage

What does the research say?

Widescale research suggests that members of the LGBTQ community generally experience worse mental health outcomes than their heterosexual counterparts. This is possibly due to the stigmatisation they receive.

The mental health benefits of marriage generally are well-documented . In 2009, the American Medical Association officially recognised that excluding sexual minorities from marriage was significantly contributing to the overall poor health among same-sex households compared to heterosexual households.

Converging lines of evidence also suggest that sexual orientation stigma and discrimination are at least associated with increased psychological distress and a generally decreased quality of life among lesbians and gay men.

A US study that surveyed more than 36,000 people aged 18-70 found lesbian, gay and bisexual individuals were far less psychologically distressed if they were in a legally recognised same-sex marriage than if they were not. Married heterosexuals were less distressed than either of these groups.

So, it would seem that being in a legally recognised same-sex marriage can at least partly overcome the substantial health disparity between heterosexual and lesbian, gay, and bisexual persons.

The authors concluded by urging other researchers to consider same-sex marriage as a public health issue.

A review of the research examining the impact of marriage denial on the health and wellbeing of gay men and lesbians conceded that marriage equality is a profoundly complex and nuanced issue. But, it argued that depriving lesbians and gay men the tangible (and intangible) benefits of marriage is not only an act of discrimination – it also:

disadvantages them by restricting their citizenship;

hinders their mental health, wellbeing, and social mobility; and

generally disenfranchises them from various cultural, legal, economic and political aspects of their lives.

Of further concern is research finding that in comparison to lesbian, gay and bisexual respondents living in areas where gay marriage was allowed, living in areas where it was banned was associated with significantly higher rates of:

mood disorders (36% higher);

psychiatric comorbidity – that is, multiple mental health conditions (36% higher); and

anxiety disorders (248% higher).

But what about the kids?

Opponents of same-sex marriage often argue that children raised in same-sex households perform worse on a variety of life outcome measures when compared to those raised in a heterosexual household. There is some merit to this argument.

In terms of education and general measures of success, the literature isn’t entirely unanimous. However, most studies have found that on these metrics there is no difference between children raised by same-sex or opposite-sex parents.

In 2005, the American Psychological Association released a brief reviewing research on same-sex parenting. It unambiguously summed up its stance on the issue of whether or not same-sex parenting negatively impacts children:

Not a single study has found children of lesbian or gay parents to be disadvantaged in any significant respect relative to children of heterosexual parents.

Further reading: Same-sex couples and their children: what does the evidence tell us?

Drawing conclusions

Same-sex marriage has already been legalised in 23 countries around the world , inhabited by more than 760 million people.

Despite the above studies positively linking marriage with wellbeing, it may be premature to definitively assert causality .

But overall, the evidence is fairly clear. Same-sex marriage leads to a host of social and even public health benefits, including a range of advantages for mental health and wellbeing. The benefits accrue to society as a whole, whether you are in a same-sex relationship or not.

As the body of research in support of same-sex marriage continues to grow, the case in favour of it becomes stronger.

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Gay Marriage Is Good for America

Subscribe to governance weekly, jonathan rauch jonathan rauch senior fellow - governance studies.

June 21, 2008

By order of its state Supreme Court, California began legally marrying same-sex couples this week. The first to be wed in San Francisco were Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, pioneering gay-rights activists who have been a couple for more than 50 years.

More ceremonies will follow, at least until November, when gay marriage will go before California’s voters. They should choose to keep it. To understand why, imagine your life without marriage. Meaning, not merely your life if you didn’t happen to get married. What I am asking you to imagine is life without even the possibility of marriage.

Re-enter your childhood, but imagine your first crush, first kiss, first date and first sexual encounter, all bereft of any hope of marriage as a destination for your feelings. Re-enter your first serious relationship, but think about it knowing that marrying the person is out of the question.

Imagine that in the law’s eyes you and your soul mate will never be more than acquaintances. And now add even more strangeness. Imagine coming of age into a whole community, a whole culture, without marriage and the bonds of mutuality and kinship that go with it.

What is this weird world like? It has more sex and less commitment than a world with marriage. It is a world of fragile families living on the shadowy outskirts of the law; a world marked by heightened fear of loneliness or abandonment in crisis or old age; a world in some respects not even civilized, because marriage is the foundation of civilization.

This was the world I grew up in. The AIDS quilt is its monument.

Few heterosexuals can imagine living in such an upside-down world, where love separates you from marriage instead of connecting you with it. Many don’t bother to try. Instead, they say same-sex couples can get the equivalent of a marriage by going to a lawyer and drawing up paperwork – as if heterosexual couples would settle for anything of the sort.

Even a moment’s reflection shows the fatuousness of “Let them eat contracts.” No private transaction excuses you from testifying in court against your partner, or entitles you to Social Security survivor benefits, or authorizes joint tax filing, or secures U.S. residency for your partner if he or she is a foreigner. I could go on and on.

Marriage, remember, is not just a contract between two people. It is a contract that two people make, as a couple, with their community – which is why there is always a witness. Two people can’t go into a room by themselves and come out legally married. The partners agree to take care of each other so the community doesn’t have to. In exchange, the community deems them a family, binding them to each other and to society with a host of legal and social ties.

This is a fantastically fruitful bargain. Marriage makes you, on average, healthier, happier and wealthier. If you are a couple raising kids, marrying is likely to make them healthier, happier and wealthier, too. Marriage is our first and best line of defense against financial, medical and emotional meltdown. It provides domesticity and a safe harbor for sex. It stabilizes communities by formalizing responsibilities and creating kin networks. And its absence can be calamitous, whether in inner cities or gay ghettos.

In 2008, denying gay Americans the opportunity to marry is not only inhumane, it is unsustainable. History has turned a corner: Gay couples – including gay parents – live openly and for the most part comfortably in mainstream life. This will not change, ever.

Because parents want happy children, communities want responsible neighbors, employers want productive workers, and governments want smaller welfare caseloads, society has a powerful interest in recognizing and supporting same-sex couples. It will either fold them into marriage or create alternatives to marriage, such as publicly recognized and subsidized cohabitation. Conservatives often say same-sex marriage should be prohibited because it does not exemplify the ideal form of family. They should consider how much less ideal an example gay couples will set by building families and raising children out of wedlock.

Nowadays, even opponents of same-sex marriage generally concede it would be good for gay people. What they worry about are the possible secondary effects it could have as it ramifies through law and society. What if gay marriage becomes a vehicle for polygamists who want to marry multiple partners, egalitarians who want to radically rewrite family law, or secularists who want to suppress religious objections to homosexuality?

Space doesn’t permit me to treat those and other objections in detail, beyond noting that same-sex marriage no more leads logically to polygamy than giving women one vote leads to giving men two; that gay marriage requires only few and modest changes to existing family law; and that the Constitution provides robust protections for religious freedom.

I’ll also note, in passing, that these arguments conscript homosexuals into marriagelessness in order to stop heterosexuals from making bad decisions, a deal to which we gay folks say, “Thanks, but no thanks.” We wonder how many heterosexuals would give up their own marriage, or for that matter their own divorce, to discourage other people from making poor policy choices. Any volunteers?

Honest advocacy requires acknowledging that same-sex marriage is a significant social change and, as such, is not risk-free. I believe the risks are modest, manageable, and likely to be outweighed by the benefits. Still, it’s wise to guard against unintended consequences by trying gay marriage in one or two states and seeing what happens, which is exactly what the country is doing.

By the same token, however, honest opposition requires acknowledging that there are risks and unforeseen consequences on both sides of the equation. Some of the unforeseen consequences of allowing same-sex marriage will be good, not bad. And barring gay marriage is risky in its own right.

America needs more marriages, not fewer, and the best way to encourage marriage is to encourage marriage, which is what society does by bringing gay couples inside the tent. A good way to discourage marriage, on the other hand, is to tarnish it as discriminatory in the minds of millions of young Americans. Conservatives who object to redefining marriage risk redefining it themselves, as a civil-rights violation.

There are two ways to see the legal marriage of Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon. One is as the start of something radical: an experiment that jeopardizes millennia of accumulated social patrimony. The other is as the end of something radical: an experiment in which gay people were told that they could have all the sex and love they could find, but they could not even think about marriage. If I take the second view, it is on conservative – in fact, traditional – grounds that gay souls and straight society are healthiest when sex, love and marriage all walk in step.

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David Blankenhorn, Jonathan Rauch

March 2, 2009

February 21, 2009

How Gay Marriage Became a Constitutional Right

The untold story of the improbable campaign that finally tipped the U.S. Supreme Court.

On May 18, 1970, Jack Baker and Michael McConnell walked into a courthouse in Minneapolis, paid $10, and applied for a marriage license. The county clerk, Gerald Nelson, refused to give it to them. Obviously, he told them, marriage was for people of the opposite sex; it was silly to think otherwise.

When three same-sex couples in Hawaii were refused marriage licenses in 1990, no national gay-rights group would help them file a lawsuit. They appealed in vain to National Gay Rights Advocates (now defunct), the Lesbian Rights Project (now the National Center for Lesbian Rights), the American Civil Liberties Union, and Lambda Legal, where a young lawyer named Evan Wolfson wanted to take the case—but his bosses, who were opposed to pursuing gay marriage, wouldn’t let him.

That moment was a turning point for Wolfson. He’d envisioned Hawaii as a tectonic advance—but what if it was actually a massive setback? He realized that legal victories were useless if the political process could erase them in an instant. He and Foley had won the argument in court, but they were no match for the power of the right-wing lobby groups that clobbered them in Congress. They had no influence on the Hawaii state legislators who sought to duck the politically toxic issue. And they were swimming against the tide of overwhelming public opinion.

On a sunny day in April, Wolfson sat in the backseat of a taxi in Knoxville, Tennessee, preparing to speak about gay marriage—his life’s project—in an auditorium at the University of Tennessee law school. Wolfson, who was raised in Pittsburgh and lives in New York, had last been to Tennessee in what he called his “Paul Revere days”: the years after the Hawaii ruling when he toured the country insisting, “Marriage is coming!”

After 2004, when voters in 11 states approved constitutional amendments, top Democrats blamed gay marriage for John Kerry’s loss in the presidential election, and some gay-rights leaders publicly wondered if the push for marriage should be shelved. The losses were piling up. In June 2005, representatives of 10 advocacy groups, including Wolfson and Bonauto, met in New Jersey to stiffen their resolve. They drafted a document, “Winning Marriage: What We Need to Do,” that proposed a timetable of 15 to 25 years. At the time, that seemed optimistic.

On the eve of the arguments before the Supreme Court, Freedom to Marry had tracked down every plaintiff from every case they could find through the decades. Dozens of them, along with their lawyers, filled a Washington law firm’s offices: A crowd of people united by the fact that they had all sued their government for the right to get married. Baehr and Dancel ran to Wolfson, embraced him joyfully, and draped a fragrant Hawaiian lei around his neck. Valerie Jarrett, the guest of honor, had come to thank Wolfson on behalf of the president, and to give a toast. “The word that really touches me personally tonight, looking at all of you, is the word love,” she said. “That’s what makes our country strong.”

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Marriage Equality: Global Comparisons

The first known same-sex couple to get married in Northern Ireland addresses the media in February 2020.

More than two dozen countries have marriage equality , and more than half of these are in Western Europe.
Cuba and Slovenia were the latest to legalize same-sex marriage, both in 2022.
The expansion of LGBTQ+ rights around the globe has been uneven, with bans on same-sex relationships still in place in many countries.

Introduction

Thirty-three countries, including the United States, have legalized same-sex marriage, and some others recognize same-sex civil unions. Yet same-sex marriage remains banned in many countries, and the expansion of broader LGBTQ+ rights has been uneven globally. International organizations, including the United Nations, have issued resolutions in support of LGBTQ+ rights, but human rights groups say these organizations have limited power to enforce them.

International Norms, Democracy, and LGBTQ+ Rights

Rights monitors find a strong correlation between LGBTQ+ rights and democratic societies; the research and advocacy group Freedom House lists nearly all the countries with marriage equality—when same-sex couples have the same legal right to marriage as different-sex couples—as “free.” “Wherever you see restrictions on individuals—in terms of speech, expression, or freedom of assembly—you see a crackdown on LGBT rights,” says Julie Dorf, senior advisor to the Council for Global Equality, a Washington-based group that promotes LGBTQ+ rights in U.S. foreign policy. “It’s the canary in the coal mine,” she says.

Civil Society

Javier Corrales, a professor at Amherst College who focuses on LGBTQ+ rights in Latin America, points to income levels and the influence of religion in politics, as well as the overall strength of democracy, to explain regional divergences [PDF].

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The UN Human Rights Council, expressing “grave concern” over violence and discrimination against individuals based on sexual orientation and gender identity, commissioned the body’s first study on the topic [PDF] in 2011. In 2014, the council passed a resolution to combat anti-LGBTQ+ violence and discrimination. Two years later, the United Nations appointed its first-ever independent expert on sexual orientation and gender identity. “What is important here is the gradual building of consensus,” says Graeme Reid, director of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights program at Human Rights Watch. “There’s an accumulation of moral pressure on member states to at least address the most overt forms of discrimination or violence.”

Activists have focused on antiviolence and antidiscrimination campaigns rather than marriage equality. “There’s no sensible diplomat who would think that pushing same-sex marriage on a country that’s not ready for it is a good idea,” says Dorf. She adds that not all countries with marriage equality allow same-sex couples to jointly adopt and cautions against equating the right to marry with freedom from discrimination. Still, antidiscrimination laws are gaining traction worldwide. In 2020, eighty-one countries and territories, including some that retain sodomy laws, had protections against employment discrimination [PDF] based on gender identity or sexual orientation.

United States

In 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges that the Constitution grants same-sex couples the right to marry. The 5-4 ruling effectively legalized same-sex marriage in the thirteen states where it remained banned and extended to U.S. territories. In 2022, amid fears that the Supreme Court could rule to let states deny the validity of same-sex marriages, Congress passed and President Joe Biden signed into law the Respect for Marriage Act , which recognizes such marriages at the federal level. That year, 71 percent of Americans polled approved of same-sex marriage, up from 27 percent in 1996.

Despite the increase in public support for same-sex marriage, debate continues between advocates of legal equality and individuals and institutions that object to marriage equality on the basis of religious belief. In 2018, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of a Colorado baker who refused to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple because of his religious beliefs, violating the state’s civil rights law. However, the court chose not to issue a broader ruling on whether businesses have a right to deny goods or services to LGBTQ+ people for religious reasons. In 2020, the court ruled that a 1964 civil rights law prohibiting sex discrimination in the workplace also applies to discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. The ruling protected LGBTQ+ employees from being fired in more than half of states where no such legal protections previously existed.

However, the Supreme Court’s decision in 2022 to overturn Roe v. Wade , a case that used the fourteenth amendment to protect the right to have an abortion, sparked some concerns that it would similarly overturn its 2015 decision on marriage equality. In his concurring opinion on the 2022 ruling, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that Obergefell v. Hodges was “ demonstrably erroneous ” and that the court had a duty to overrule this and other decisions.

More than half of the countries that have marriage equality are in Western Europe. Same-sex marriage has been legalized in the Netherlands (2001), Belgium (2003), Spain (2005), Norway (2009), Sweden (2009), Portugal (2010), Iceland (2010), Denmark (2012), France (2013), the United Kingdom (2013), Luxembourg (2015), Ireland (2015), Finland (2017), Malta (2017), Germany (2017), Austria (2019), and Switzerland (2021). In Italy, the parliament approved civil unions for same-sex couples in 2016, but same-sex marriage is not legal. Lawmakers in Andorra voted in 2022 to convert all same-sex civil unions to civil marriages and legalize same-sex marriage. The changes will take effect in early 2023. Meanwhile, Slovenia made history in 2022 as the first country of the former Yugoslavia to legalize marriage and adoption for same-sex couples.

“More than half of the countries that have marriage equality are in Western Europe.”

Despite this, same-sex marriage remains restricted in much of Central and Eastern Europe. A 2019 Pew Research Center poll found that support for legal recognition of same-sex marriage was 28 percent in Lithuania and 14 percent in Ukraine. Support in Poland and Hungary has increased in recent years, to 47 percent and 49 percent, respectively, though both maintain bans on same-sex marriage. At least ten other countries in Central and Eastern Europe have such prohibitions. Estonia allows civil unions, though popular support for marriage equality in the Baltic states is low. The Czech Republic and Hungary recognize same-sex partnerships. In 2018, a Budapest court ruled that same-sex marriages performed abroad must be recognized as partnerships. Since then, however, Hungarian lawmakers and populist Prime Minister Viktor Orban have passed several anti-LGBTQ+ laws, including ones that prohibit same-sex couples from adopting children and ban any content deemed to promote being gay or transgender from being distributed to people under the age of eighteen. The European Union (EU) condemned the laws as discriminatory.

In 2013, Russia made it a crime to distribute “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relationships among minors.” Dozens of people have been fined for violations , including participating in protests and sharing articles on social media. Human rights groups say the law is a tool for anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination, and Europe’s top human rights court ruled that it is discriminatory and violates freedom of expression. In 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed into law an expansion of the ban . It prohibited the distribution of such material to adults, made it illegal to treat same-sex relationships as “normal,” and increased penalties against people who violate the law. Meanwhile, in Chechnya, a semiautonomous republic within Russia, dozens of men suspected of being gay have been detained, tortured, and even killed in two separate official crackdowns since 2017.

The EU does not require its members to recognize same-sex marriage, though a 2018 ruling [PDF] by the EU’s top court says they must uphold same-sex couples’ rights to freedom of movement and residence. In 2021, the court ruled that all EU countries must recognize children of same-sex couples, even countries that do not have marriage equality. The ruling came after Bulgaria refused to grant identity documents to the daughter of a same-sex couple. A 2013 European Parliament report on human rights and democracy “encourages” EU institutions and member states to recognize same-sex marriage or civil unions as “a political, social and human and civil rights issue ” [PDF]; however, the EU is not able to impose such policy changes on its members.

In 2005, Canada became the first country in the Western Hemisphere to legalize same-sex marriage. It was followed by Argentina in 2010, Brazil and Uruguay in 2013, Mexico in 2015, Colombia in 2016, Ecuador in 2019, Costa Rica in 2020, and Chile in 2021. The only Central American country to recognize same-sex couples is Costa Rica, though some others in the region have limited antidiscrimination protections.

Support for marriage equality varies across the region. According to a 2016 survey [PDF] by the International LGBTI Association (ILGA), 54 percent of Canadians, 48 percent of Chileans, and 57 percent of Argentines were in favor of legalizing same-sex marriage. In Central America, support was much lower: 33 percent of Costa Ricans, 28 percent of Nicaraguans, and 27 percent of Ecuadorians supported legalizing it. In 2018, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled in favor of marriage equality, but the decision has not spurred much action among member states.

Support for legalizing same-sex marriage also remains low in the Caribbean, at just 16 percent in Jamaica and 23 percent in the Dominican Republic, according to the ILGA. Bermuda, a British territory, legalized domestic partnerships for same-sex couples in 2017, but the government fought to reissue a ban. Same-sex marriage remains illegal there. However, in 2022, Antigua and Barbuda, Bermuda, and St. Kitts and Nevis struck down laws criminalizing gay sex.

The governments of Bolivia, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Paraguay have enacted constitutional bans on same-sex marriage. Although Brazil has legalized same-sex marriage, in 2019, then-President Jair Bolsonaro removed the Human Rights Ministry’s ability to consider LGBTQ+ concerns. He drew criticism from LGBTQ+ advocacy groups during his campaign over homophobic remarks .

Cuba, where homosexuality was once punished by internment in forced-labor camps , has changed markedly in recent years. The National Assembly passed an antidiscrimination law in 2013, and a new constitution in 2019 removed language defining marriage as between a man and a woman. In September 2022, voters approved a referendum legalizing same-sex marriage.

Pacific Rim

Australia and New Zealand are the only Pacific Rim countries in which same-sex marriage is legal. Same-sex marriage became legal in Taiwan in 2019, as the legislature implemented a ruling the top court issued two years earlier. In China, 43 percent of people supported legalizing same-sex marriage in 2021.

A district in Tokyo began recognizing same-sex unions in 2015, amid rapidly shifting public opinion in Japan. In 2022, the city adopted legislation granting same-sex couples some privileges enjoyed by married couples. A court in Sapporo ruled a year earlier that the Japanese government’s refusal to recognize same-sex marriages is unconstitutional, while a court in Osaka ruled that it is constitutional. In a 2022 survey, public support for same-sex marriage reached nearly 65 percent.

In 2022, a court in Seoul, South Korea, ruled against recognizing same-sex partnerships and rejected a same-sex couple’s claim to spousal health insurance, even though public opinion supports antidiscrimination legislation. More than a third of people in South Korea supported legalizing same-sex marriage in 2021.

“Australia and New Zealand are the only Pacific Rim countries in which same-sex marriage is legal.”

Lawmakers in Thailand and Vietnam have considered bills to legalize same-sex marriage or civil partnerships. However, in 2021, Thailand’s Constitutional Court ruled that the nation’s marriage law—which only recognizes marriage between a man and a woman—does not violate the constitution. The country’s parliament is considering two proposals that will essentially give lawmakers a choice between permitting civil partnerships for same-sex couples and allowing them to marry. In the Philippines, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has said that if there is popular support for same-sex unions, it is up to lawmakers to legalize it. However, he has maintained his own opposition to same-sex marriage.

Same-sex relations between men are banned in parts of Indonesia, Malaysia, and Myanmar. Rights groups have reported increased threats and violence against LGBTQ+ people in Indonesia since 2016, including discriminatory comments by several public officials. Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong vowed in 2022 to decriminalize gay sex but said this would not change the status quo on marriage. In Brunei, gay sex is punishable by stoning to death , though following international outcry, the government said it won’t enforce the law.

South and Central Asia

Same-sex relations are illegal in much of South and Central Asia [PDF], including in Bangladesh and Pakistan. In 2018, India lifted a colonial-era ban on gay sex, and in 2020, Bhutan moved to decriminalize it. In 2022, India’s Supreme Court ruled to expand the definition of family to include “atypical” families, such as same-sex couples, though same-sex marriage remains illegal. Nepal has enacted some protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation, and in 2015 a government-appointed panel recommended that lawmakers legalize same-sex marriage. Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Pakistan allow people to register as a third gender in official documents.

There is little information on public attitudes toward homosexuality in South and Central Asia. ILGA found 35 percent of Indians and 30 percent of Pakistanis in 2016 thought same-sex marriage should be legal. Support in Kazakhstan stood at 12 percent.

Support for same-sex marriage has historically been low in Afghanistan. According to a 2022 Human Rights Watch report , the Taliban’s takeover in 2021 “dramatically worsened” LGBTQ+ people’s lives, with individuals reporting attacks, sexual assaults, and direct threats against them or their families.

Middle East and North Africa

Same-sex relations are illegal in much of the region and are punishable by death in Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen. Algeria, Morocco, Oman, Syria, Tunisia, and Gaza have laws explicitly prohibiting same-sex acts. When Qatar hosted the 2022 FIFA World Cup, its anti-LGBTQ+ laws were widely criticized; it prohibits gay sex, and security forces have assaulted transgender women and other LGBTQ+ people, according to Human Rights Watch.

In 2018, Lebanese courts set a potential precedent for the decriminalization of gay sex, but the country continued to crack down on peaceful LGBTQ+ gatherings in 2021 and banned them outright in 2022.

Israel recognizes same-sex marriages performed in other countries, but a bill that would have legalized same-sex marriages failed to pass in the Knesset, Israel’s legislative assembly, in 2018. Same-sex couples enjoy civil benefits, including residency permits for the partners of Israeli citizens, and they were granted the right to use surrogates to have children in 2022.

Israel stands apart from its neighbors in public attitudes toward same-sex couples: according to the 2016 ILGA survey, 49 percent of Israelis said same-sex marriage should be legal, compared to 19 percent of respondents in the United Arab Emirates, 16 percent in Egypt, and 14 percent in both Jordan and Morocco.

South Africa is the only sub-Saharan African country where same-sex couples can marry. The parliament legalized same-sex marriage in 2006 , less than a decade after the constitutional court struck down laws banning sex between men. The postapartheid constitution was the world’s first to protect people on the basis of sexual orientation, though the 2016 ILGA poll found only 40 percent of South Africans were in favor of legalizing same-sex marriage, and human rights monitors have reported failures by security forces to uphold rights of lesbians and transgender men.

“South Africa is the only sub-Saharan African country where same-sex couples can marry.”

Same-sex relations are illegal on much of the continent and are punishable by death in Mauritania and Sudan, as well as in parts of Nigeria and Somalia. Polling by Afrobarometer between 2016 and 2018 found that 78 percent [PDF] of Africans across thirty-four countries were intolerant of homosexuality. Although the African Union’s human rights commission adopted a resolution condemning violence against LGBTQ+ people in 2014, a group of African nations attempted to suspend the appointment of a UN expert charged with investigating anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination in 2016. In Ghana, where same-sex relations are an imprisonable offense, draft legislation would make identifying as gay or an LGBTQ+ ally a felony.

However, there have been recent advances: the Afrobarometer poll found that majorities in three countries in addition to South Africa—Cape Verde, Mauritius, and Namibia—are tolerant of homosexuality. In 2015 Mozambique decriminalized same-sex relations, followed by the Seychelles in 2016, Angola and Botswana in 2019, and Gabon in 2020. And in recent years, courts in Kenya, Uganda, and Zambia have ruled in favor of LGBTQ+ advocacy groups.

Recommended Resources

On The President’s Inbox podcast, Council for Global Equality’s Julie Dorf discusses the advancement of global LGBTQ+ rights .

Former CFR fellow Paul J. Angelo and CFR’s Dominic Bocci unpack the changing landscape of global LGBTQ+ rights .

This CFR event discusses how to report on LGBTQ+ issues .

Human Rights Watch provides extensive coverage on global LGBTQ+ rights .

Equaldex tracks actions related to LGBTQ+ rights internationally.

Pew Research Center measures the divide on acceptance of homosexuality around the world.

Zoltan Aguera, Eleanor Albert, Nathalie Bussemaker, Claire Klobucista, Laura Hillard, Alice Hickson, Jacqueline Jedrych, Lindsay Maizland, Melissa Manno, Noah Morgenstein, Brianna Lee, Samuel Parmer, Danielle Renwick, and Avery Reyna contributed to this Backgrounder.

Democracy and LGBTQ+ Rights

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Cancel Culture Works. We Wouldn’t Have Marriage Equality Without It.

By Sasha Issenberg

Mr. Issenberg the author of “The Engagement: America’s Quarter-Century Struggle Over Same-Sex Marriage.”

Anyone looking to understand how same-sex marriage went from legal in one state to the law of the land a decade later should not overlook the small crowd that gathered outside San Diego’s Manchester Grand Hyatt hotel just past noon one Friday in July 2008, holding signs that said, “The Hyatt of hypocrisy.”

Those present had been rallied by a retired Republican political operative named Fred Karger. His aim was the defeat of Proposition 8, a ballot measure that if passed, would ban same-sex marriage in California. Instead of aiming to mobilize voters or move public opinion against the measure, however, he decided to target the money behind it.

Doug Manchester’s $125,000 donation was not the biggest to the pro-Proposition 8 cause, but he was the most substantial public-facing target Mr. Karger could find. He began picketing Mr. Manchester’s pre-eminent holdings, including the namesake downtown convention hotel, with a boycott that would endure for years. It was the first time gay-marriage activists adopted a strategy of scaring their most well-heeled opponents away from the fight.

Long before the phrase “cancel culture” entered the lexicon or Republican senators complained about the power of “woke capital,” Mr. Karger refined a digital-era playbook for successfully redirecting scrutiny to the opposition's financial backers. The movement to legalize same-sex marriage is often understood as one of civil rights test cases. And indeed, savvy legislative lobbying, fortuitous demographic change and pop-culture influence all played their part, too. But a largely forgotten story is the way a group of political entrepreneurs changed the economic terrain on which cultural conflict was waged. They demonstrated that shaming and shunning could amount to more than an online pile-on and serve as a potent tactic for political change.

The impact on the marriage debate became visible in November 2012, when same-sex-marriage advocates won four states after losing in every one of the 35 that previously put the question before voters. A mix of targeted boycotts and general cultural disapprobation combined to create such a stigma around disapproval of same-sex marriage that many of the opposition’s largest individual, corporate and institutional backers effectively ceded the conflict to their rivals.

Since the first statewide ballot measures relating to marriage, in 1998, the two sides had competed roughly at parity. In 2004, when 13 states approved constitutional amendments against same-sex marriage, $6.8 million went to support their passage and $6.6 million against, according to an analysis by the National Institute for Money in Politics . In 2008, when three more states adopted constitutional bans, $49.8 million was spent in favor and $50.8 million against.

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About six-in-ten Americans say legalization of same-sex marriage is good for society

With the Senate set to take up a bill that would protect same-sex marriage at the federal level, a clear majority of Americans continue to say that the legalization of same-sex marriage is good for society.

A pie chart showing that most Americans say legalization of same-sex marriage is good for society

About six-in-ten adults (61%) express a positive view of the impact of same-sex marriage being legal, including 36% who say it is very good for society. Roughly four-in-ten have a negative view (37%), with 19% saying it is very bad.

The new survey – which was fielded in October, before the midterm elections – comes as some have questioned whether same-sex marriage will remain legal nationally following the Supreme Court’s June decision to overturn Roe v. Wade , turning abortion laws back to the states.

Pew Research Center asked this question to track public views about the legal status of same-sex marriage. For this analysis, we surveyed 5,098 adults from Oct. 10-16, 2022. Everyone who took part in this survey is a member of the Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. This way nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories. Read more about the ATP’s methodology .

Here are the questions used for this report, along with responses, and its methodology .

Views of the impact of same-sex marriage on society are largely unchanged since 2019. However, there has been a dramatic increase in public support for same-sex marriage over the past two decades. As recently as 2004 , nearly twice as many Americans opposed than favored allowing gay and lesbian people to marry legally; by 2019, public opinion had reversed, with 61% in favor and 31% opposed.

Opinions about same-sex marriage’s impact on society vary widely by age, education and – most starkly – by party and religion.

A bar chart showing that there is a sharp Republican divide over same-sex marriage: Most conservatives view legalization negatively, while moderates and liberals are largely positive

Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents have a largely positive view of the effect of legalizing same-sex marriage: Eight-in-ten say it has been good for society, while 19% say it has been bad. Republicans and Republican leaners are more divided: 43% view the legalization of same-sex marriage positively, 55% negatively.

There are wide ideological differences within both parties. Two-thirds of conservative Republicans (66%) view the impact of same-sex marriage negatively. Nearly the same share of moderate and liberal Republicans (62%) take a positive view.

Among Democrats, liberals overwhelmingly view the legalization of same-sex marriage positively (93%), while a smaller majority of conservative and moderate Democrats (69%) say the same.

Majorities of Asian (70%), White (61%), Hispanic (60%) and Black adults (57%) say the legalization of same-sex marriage is good for society. For the most part, these opinions are little changed since 2019, though the share of Black adults who take a positive view has increased from 50% to 57% over this period.

There are also large differences by age. Three-quarters of Americans ages 18 to 29 say same-sex marriage being legal is good for society, with about half (52%) saying it is very good. That compares with 63% of those 30 to 49 and about half (52%) of those 50 and older.

Opinions about the effect of same-sex marriage vary widely among religious groups. While 71% of White evangelical Protestants say the legalization of marriage between same-sex couples is bad for society, 62% of White non-evangelical Protestants say it is good. So too do about two-thirds of Catholics (66%) and a much larger majority of religiously unaffiliated adults (82%). In contrast, Black Protestants are closely divided on same-sex marriage: 49% say it is good, while 46% say it is bad.

Among Americans with a bachelor’s degree or more education, seven-in-ten say the legalization of same-sex marriage is good for society, compared with 63% of those with some college experience but no bachelor’s degree. About half of those with a high school diploma or less (51%) say same-sex marriage is very good (26%) or somewhat good (25%) for society, with 45% saying it is somewhat bad (20%) or very bad (24%).

A chart showing that a majority of young Republicans say it’s good that same-sex marriage is legal

While partisan divides are evident regardless of Americans’ age and educational background, these differences are more modest among younger adults than older people. Younger Republicans express much more positive views of same-sex marriage than older Republicans, but age differences among Democrats are less pronounced.

Among those ages 18 to 29, 83% of Democrats and 64% of Republicans say the legalization of same-sex marriage is good for society. Among adults 50 and older, by comparison, more than twice as many Democrats (78%) as Republicans (34%) say it is good for society.

Educational differences are somewhat wider among Democrats than among Republicans. While about nine-in-ten Democrats with a postgraduate degree (92%) or bachelor’s degree (89%) say same-sex marriage is good for society, about two-thirds of those with a high school education or less (66%) say the same. There is little variation among Republicans by educational attainment.

Note: Here are the questions used for this report, along with responses, and its methodology .

LGBTQ Attitudes & Experiences
Same-Sex Marriage

Gabriel Borelli is a research associate focusing on U.S. politics and policy at Pew Research Center .

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The Pros and Cons of Gay Marriage Argumentative Essay

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Relationships between sexes have been traditionally streamlined into the heterosexual standards of behavior. Marriage, as a union of two people before the law and the church, is mostly perceived as such comprising representatives of different sexes, a man and a woman.

However, apart from heterosexual couples, there also emerge occurrences when two people of the same sex desire to form a matrimonial unit. In such cases, the term of same-sex marriage or gay marriage is applied whenever such union is officially recognized by the legal system of a country. The attitude to gay marriage has differed throughout the existence of humankind, varying from approval to indifference to persecution.

After a historical wave of human rights movement, modern society appears to be reconsidering its attitude to gay marriage on the whole, and a number of countries have already accepted gay marriage as legal. Despite this change, the opposition between the proponents and the opponents of gay marriage remains tense, nurtured by a wide range of mutually exclusive arguments for and against gay marriage.

The first argument typically used to defend gay marriage in public opinion is the populist slogan of human rights movement that every person, irrespective of sexual background, has the right to love and family life. Indeed, by denying marriage among representatives of the same sex, the principle of majority rule, minority right is violated (Messerli).

If homosexually oriented people are viewed as a minority, then it appears that denying marriage to them is similar to denying marriage to people of non-Caucasus race, etc. In fact, such prohibition of gay marriage appears nothing less than mere discrimination, a phenomenon that modern society is trying to eradicate by all means.

Counteracting the argument that prohibition of gay marriage appears similar to discrimination is the idea that marriage, in the traditional understanding of the word, is the union of necessarily different sexes, a man and a woman. The main function of a traditional heterosexual marriage is viewed in producing children of their own, a function that a same-sex marriage cannot physically perform.

Adopting children or getting offspring via artificial fertilization (in couples consisting of homosexual females) cannot be viewed as reproduction proper since either both or one of the partners are not directly involved in the process of conception and childbearing. Therefore, due to the inability to perform the basic function of the family, gay marriage can hardly be recognized as marriage proper.

Another argument in defense of gay marriage is viewed by some of its proponents in the fact that the practice of adopting children by gay couples promotes adoption rates and benefits the situation with parentless children. The more gay couples are legally married, the more chances there are that they will be officially allowed to adopt and raise children (Messerli).

Considering that the numbers of parentless children in the world is overflowing, gay marriages could be a beneficial solution to this problem. In addition, gay marriage would promote the sense of family among the homosexual couples and make this sense complete with adopting a child.

Opponents of same-sex marriages arduously refute the argument of the beneficial effects of child adoptions by gay couples. For one thing, the standard type of family accepted in a traditional society and still dominating in modern world is a family where one of the parents is a man (or a father) and the other parent is a woman (or a mother).

In case with gay marriages, this balance of sexes would be impossible to maintain, and therefore the child may get confused about his or her family composition. In its turn, this may lead to misunderstanding of masculine and feminine roles and messy behavior with lack of own definition. For another thing, parent-child relations in a gay marriage are quite obscure.

It is a widely known fact that many people who grew up homosexual used to be sexually abused in their childhood. This closed circle may engross the adopted children into unwanted sexual practices that would streamline their life in a direction undesired by them.

A legal case in support of same-sex marriage is the idea that marriage as a social institution is readily recognized by the general public. Having concluded a legal marriage, a homosexual couple can enjoy the same citizen and family rights as traditional heterosexual couples.

Moreover, being officially registered as spouses brings homosexual more understanding in daily situations. In an interview to the Bay Area Reporter, policy director for Marriage Equality USA Pamela Brown states that “No one questions your spouse in the hospital if you’re married; but in a domestic partnership, you’d better bring your paperwork” (Laird). Community welcomes legalized marriage and demonstrates more tolerance if a homosexual couple is joined by official conjugal ties.

Despite the arduous support of institution of marriage on the example of gay marriages, there exist certain dangers connected with accepting same-sex marriages as legal. The basis of social respect for the institution of marriage lies in the uniqueness of the union between the man and the woman, since they are the only couple between sexes able to procreate (Messerli).

The traditional understanding of family as a husband, wife, and children has been the sacred notion that has helped people survive through most dreadful challenges. The dream of true family has led soldiers to fight for their motherland, and the vision of homely comfort and cozy family hearth is the one that helped survive economic depressions.

If this standard of family is changed, the consequences might be drastic. Expanding the borders of marriage to the point where they are blurred is threatening the stability of the institute of marriage. People will then be tempted to claim that any union be called a marriage, be it a union of one men with ten wives or a couple of blood relatives. Therefore, the borders of marriage should be kept inviolable, otherwise the whole institute can collapse.

Last but not least, the most stable basis for decision on legality or illegality of gay marriage should be the Scripture that has served as a guideline for moral standards for thousands of generations. However artfully it might be misrepresented by wishful interpreters, the Bible clearly states the standards of sexual behavior since the very first days of existence: a couple is heterosexual, “male to female, joined as God intended them to be” (ProCon.org).

This absolute truth should be taken as a model on which the whole institute of marriage is based. Any other digressions and variations can only be viewed as transient and therefore cannot be accepted as a standard, since they violate the ultimate dispensation granted to humankind.

Works Cited

Laird, Cynthia. “Pros and Cons of Gay Marriage Debated.” The Bay Area Reporter Online . 2007. Web.

Messerli, Joe. “ Should Same-Sex Marriages be Legalized? ” BalancedPolitics. 2009. Web.

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Should Gay Marriage Be Legal? 6 Pros and Cons
US public opinion had shifted significantly over the years, from 27% approval of gay marriage in 1996 to 55% in 2015, the year it became legal throughout the United States, to 61% in 2019. Proponents of legal gay marriage contend that gay marriage bans are discriminatory and unconstitutional, and that same-sex couples should have access to all ...
An Argument Against Same-Sex Marriage: An ...
The debate over same-sex marriage in the United States is a contentious one, and advocates on both sides continue to work hard to make their voices heard. To explore the case against gay marriage, the Pew Forum has turned to Rick Santorum, a former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania and now a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
Evidence is clear on the benefits of legalising same-sex marriage
A US study that surveyed more than 36,000 people aged 18-70 found lesbian, gay and bisexual individuals were far less psychologically distressed if they were in a legally recognised same-sex ...
An Overview of the Same-Sex Marriage Debate
Gay Marriage and the LawThe constitutional dimensions of the same-sex marriage debate.: A Stable MajorityAmericans continue to oppose gay marriage, but most support civil unions.: Map: State Policies on Same-Sex MarriageMaps showing state laws on gay marriage, civil unions and domestic partnerships.: Religious Groups' Official Positions on Gay MarriageA breakdown of 17 major religious groups ...
An Argument For Same-Sex Marriage: An Interview with Jonathan Rauch
The debate over same-sex marriage in the United States is a contentious one, and advocates on both sides continue to work hard to make their voices heard. To explore the case for gay marriage, the Pew Forum has turned to Jonathan Rauch, a columnist at The National Journal and guest scholar at The Brookings Institution.
The Argument for Same-Sex Marriage
Nelson Tebbe & Deborah A. Widiss, Equal Access and the Right to Marry, 158 U. PA. L. REV. 1375, 1377 (2010). In The Argument for Same-Sex Marriage, Professors Tebbe and Widiss revisit the arguments they made in Equal Access and the Right to Marry and emphasize their belief that distinguishing between different-sex marriage and same-sex marriage ...
Argumentative Essay On Gay Marriage
900 Words. 4 Pages. Open Document. The fight for the legalization of gay marriage is not a new one. Tracing back to the 1960s, one of the first instances of protest was in New York City. Police had been raiding gay bars often, but one day the gay and lesbian people began to fight back. This caused many riots and protest throughout the country.
Gay Marriage Is Good for America
Gay Marriage Is Good for America. By order of its state Supreme Court, California began legally marrying same-sex couples this week. The first to be wed in San Francisco were Del Martin and ...
How Gay Marriage Won in the U.S. Supreme Court
The message gay-marriage campaigners had been using—an appeal to reason that enumerated the benefits of marriage that were being denied to gay people—wasn't persuasive at all.
Argumentative Essay On Same Sex Marriage
However, even today, same-sex marriage is not fully accepted and supported. While some argue that gay marriage is wrong, there is good reason as to why it should be legal. Marriage is a right that benefits society protected by the U.S. constitution and the acceptance and legalization of same-sex marriage decreases the suicide rates among people.
Argumentative Essay About Same Sex Marriage
822 Words. 4 Pages. Open Document. This Argumentative essay will discuss about the argument of same sex marriage. The contents are: meaning, brief background and thesis statement for the Introduction; for the Body of the discussion is the counter argument; and for the conclusion part: the summary and the restatement of the thesis statement.
Marriage Equality: Global Comparisons
ILGA found 35 percent of Indians and 30 percent of Pakistanis in 2016 thought same-sex marriage should be legal. Support in Kazakhstan stood at 12 percent. Support for same-sex marriage has ...
A review of the effects of legal access to same-sex marriage
where y ist is the relevant outcome for individual i living in state s at time t.The coefficient of interest is β.SameSexMarriage st is an indicator equal to one if individual i lived in state s during or after the year t in which same-sex marriage had been legalized in that state, and zero otherwise. This approach attempts to measure whether the adoption of same-sex marriage reforms causes ...
Argumentative Essay On Same Sex Marriage
This argumentative essay is focused on different perspectives on this question. Currently, the New York State Senate and the law approved a right of gays for marriage. Therefore, it is possible to claim that gay marriage is promoted and legalized throughout the country
Gay Marriage Argumentative Essay
After several years of riots and debates, Gay marriage was finally legalized on June 26, 2015. Same-Sex marriage should remain legal because, it offers many advantages to same-sex marriage such as legal benefits, stability for children, and the right to equality. To begin, Gay Marriage has many legal benefits like traditional marriage does.
Opinion
Anyone looking to understand how same-sex marriage went from legal in one state to the law of the land a decade later should not overlook the small crowd that gathered outside San Diego's ...
61% of Americans say same-sex marriage legalization is good for society
About six-in-ten adults (61%) express a positive view of the impact of same-sex marriage being legal, including 36% who say it is very good for society. Roughly four-in-ten have a negative view (37%), with 19% saying it is very bad. The new survey - which was fielded in October, before the midterm elections - comes as some have questioned ...
Argumentative Essay: Should Gay Marriage Be Legalized?
Specific people consider that the only one purpose of marriage is to create offspring and because of gay couple can not have a child, they do not have rights to marry. This opinion is more subjective rather than realistic. First of all, reasons of marriage could not be determined and it can be vary in different cases.
Why Same Sex Marriage Should Be Legal Essay
Every individual must support the cause of equality. Same-sex marriages must be legalized in all parts of the world, and same-sex couples must be given equal human rights. Same-sex marriages must be welcomed with joy, and same-sex couples must not be subjected to discrimination. Marrying anyone is a basic fundamental right, thus not allowing ...
The Pros and Cons of Gay Marriage Argumentative Essay
The Pros and Cons of Gay Marriage Argumentative Essay. Relationships between sexes have been traditionally streamlined into the heterosexual standards of behavior. Marriage, as a union of two people before the law and the church, is mostly perceived as such comprising representatives of different sexes, a man and a woman. However, apart from ...