The Unseen Aspects of Gay Marriage - Essay Example

The Unseen Aspects of Gay Marriage Gay marriage or same-sex marriage is the marriage between two persons of the same biological sex or gender. Though a number of gay marriages have been reported around the world, governments are still uncertain about the acceptability of this union and its implications on social and biological spheres. However, a few governments have already started formalizing same-sex marriages. The most important argument put forward by the proponents of same-sex marriage is that denying this right amounts to denying universal human rights.

However, gay marriage is not normal, for it violates nature’s law as the tendency of homosexuality is only one among the many sexual deviations experienced in humans. Secondly, it violates the social institution of marriage, family, and kinship, thus violating all the political, religious, and cultural norms. The first point that goes against gay marriage is that it violates the natural rights of children to be raised by their biological parents. Unlike many other species, human newborns require long years of support from their parents for proper development.

However, legitimizing gay marriage means children will not be born out of marital conjugation. This, in turn, leads to the situation that children will no longer have biological parents to take care of them. That means no one to give birth to a new generation and no one to take care of the newborn. Thus, it becomes evident that the claim gay marriage is not a violation of natural law is on shaky grounds. In fact, gay marriage is against the natural law of child-rearing if not against the natural law of copulation.

In the opinion of Somerville, children have the natural claim to be protected by their own biological parents; hence, society should not give sanction to the move to legalize a system that bypasses this right. The second point that opposes the acceptability of gay marriage is that gay marriage violates the ‘cultural norms of sexual union’ (Kollman, 25-27). Those who support gay marriage often argue that gay marriage has been an accepted practice among many cultures in the world like the African Kikuyu and Nuer.

However, it should also be remembered that human history has many instances of practicing cannibalism too. There are African cultures that still practice cannibalism. Does it mean that people can advocate for the ‘universal human rights’ of eating other humans? Certainly not. Thus, exceptions cannot be considered examples of normal behavior. The third point is that gay marriage is one of the many sexual disturbances or deviations are seen in humans. So, allowing gay marriage means allowing sexual gratification in an unnatural manner, and hence, it is like allowing all forms of sexual deviations ranging from “fetishism, pedophilia, transvestitism, exhibitionism, voyeurism, sadism, masochism, and all other unspecified sexual deviations” (The American Psychiatric Association).

Thus, once gay marriage is allowed, it will be followed by demands by all the so-called deviants to have legal acceptance. From the above, one can see that there are lots of issues associated with approving gay marriage. So, as Justice Scalia (qt, Seidman, 139) opines when there are contestable moral questions in the constitutional judgments, they should be handled through ordinary political process; in other words, the matter should be solved collectively and publicly. So, finally, one reaches the conclusion that the decision should be taken democratically.

Here, according to the tenets of both utilitarianism and natural law, the government will have to deny legal acceptance to gay marriage as this will cause serious injury to culture, religion, children, and society as a whole, while the only beneficiaries will be a handful of homosexuals and lesbians, or, in the words of American Psychiatric Association, a few people with sexual disturbance or deviation. In total, Gay marriage has been an issue in many nations for several decades. In fact, the present situation is an eye-opener for many anthropologists and social scientists who advocated that only heterosexual marriage is the right marriage.

Despite all such arguments for gay marriage, it is against all laws; natural, cultural, and humanitarian. Though it can be claimed that gay marriage is the exercise of individual rights, it is seen that the exercise of this individual right will have an adverse impact on society. So, to sum up, gay marriage is an activity that is to be banned.