Gay Marriage Should Be Federally Legalized

Thank you for initiating this debate, I gladly accept. Now then, my opponent argues that the 5th Amendment gives gay couples the constitutional right into the institution of marriage from the line “nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law”; specifically from the point on liberty." Let us analyze the meaning of “due process of law” first. “The constitutional guarantee of due process of law, found in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, prohibits all levels of government from arbitrarily or unfairly depriving individuals of their basic constitutional rights to life, liberty, and property.”(1) Now, this begs the question of whether or not the restriction of allowing gay couples to be married is unfair or not. Let’s analyze the use of the word liberty in the 5th amendment. Now obviously this cannot mean literal liberty, for that would really be unrestricted freedom. What” liberty” means is freedom in accordance with the current law, that no one will be deprived by what our country has set up. In other words, no one will be unfairly deprived of a liberty given to all other people. Again though, this begs the question: Is it unfair to deprive gay couples to be allowed to marry? Now that we have analyzed these things we can come to the conclusion that if there is proper reasoning to not allow gay couples (or really any relationship is excluded from marriage) to be allowed into the institution of marriage, then they are not protected by the 5th amendment, for there was proper reasoning for denying them a certain liberty. In other words, the Supreme Court could easily have unjustly and wrongly decided to deem DOMA as unconstitutional and I will explain why. I will now explain that there is proper reasoning for excluding gay couples from marriage, and that under these arguments gay couples are not protected by the 5th amendment for they are not unjustly deprived from marriage. Marriage is government regulated because the government recognizes that there are external benefits marriage can bring to the society when marriage is defined in a proper way. Let’s first look at why the government has regulated marriage between man and woman for so long. The government regulates heterosexual marriages because the government is interested in the relationship heterosexuals pursue. The government recognizes these relationships because they have a direct link to children to be raised and loved by their mother and father. It is a given fact that only a society that produces children and raises them properly survives. Heterosexual couples directly fulfill these criteria for the survival of the society and the government wants to promote this. The government recognizes that heterosexual couples simply have a natural link to a good family unit. The government promotes these family units by dispensing benefits not only to heterosexual couples who are already married as a “thank you”, but also to get other heterosexual couples to marry. The government has absolutely no interest in the private relationships of people; they only have interest in the direct benefits these relationships can naturally bring. Allowing gay marriage directly turns marriage into something that is less about the children’s needs and the society’s needs, and more about the private relationship of two people. The government has no incentive to recognize private relationships at all, so allowing gay marriage takes away the government’s reason to regulate marriage at all. If gay marriage is to be legalized at all, it should be under a total privatization of marriage where the institution itself decides who gets married, and leaves the government out of it. However, for as long as the government regulates marriage they should take advantage of the benefits marriage can bring to the society, and make it the government’s duty to define marriage in a way that best benefits the society. My opponent states, “the recent supreme court ruling in The United States v. Windsor leaves grounds for states to be sued if they exclude a couple from receiving benefits.” This is only for couples who are allowed into the institution of marriage. For if it wasn’t, then absolutely any relationship that is not included in marriage could sue on ground that they are not receiving benefits. Obviously this applies only to couples who can receive marital benefits, but are unjustly excluded from receiving them. My opponent also states, “If someone is married in a state who has legalized gay marriage such as Washington, and then moves to a state such as Utah, and they are denied rights in accordance with Utah law that leaves ground to sue the state and creates a contradiction in the law, in regards to a constitutional and civil right, gay marriage should be protected by federal law.” I argue that the government should either not allow gay marriage across all 50 states in order to keep controversy among each state down and promote a family unit in marriage, or that marriage should be totally privatized all-together for the allowance of gay marriage. Under these arguments there will be no such contradiction to the law, for I am arguing that gay marriage should not be legalized anywhere at all for as long as marriage is government regulated. Thank you, I await my opponent’s response. (1) http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com...