Gay marriage should be legal in the United States.

I will be using a dual overlaying teleological/constitutional argument to contend that gay marriage should be legalized in the United States. In this project I will borrow the harm principle, as articulated by John Stewart Mill, to argue that the only reasonable circumstance in which a government can limit a citizen's liberty is to prevent that person from causing harm to others. This view when taken to its logical conclusion would entail the legalization of gay marriage. Contention 1: The Harm Principle Gay marriage is no more capable of harming anyone than heterosexual marriage. And the canard that gay marriage out to be outlawed because it is detrimental to society is evidenced by the other groups that we do allow to marry. Consider for a moment some of the people that we do allow to marry. Pimps, drug dealers, arsonists, felons of all kinds, known pedophiles, mobsters and other criminals are all quite free to marry and do so on a daily basis. [1] Any coherent argument against gay marriage that would leave these people to freely marry would be a masterpiece of political engineering. Indeed, this is the perfect reductio ad absurdum to the notion that we are preventing gay marriage to avoid harming society. Contention 2: The Utility Factor Gay couples are in a better position to raise children and therefore produce more stable families if they are afforded marriage rights. It also provides them the opportunity to be able to spend the rest of their life with the person that they love and it guarantees them the legal protections that other married people enjoy. To deny people their right to form marriages with the person of their choice is to deny them their right to pursue happiness as they see fit. The only rational thing that can be said about our collective aversion to gay marriage is that we, as a society, have systematically demonized everything that could possibly exceed the pleasure of prayer or pro creative sex. Contention 3: Gay marriage bans violate the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment. Banning gay marriage unfairly discriminates against gay couples by preventing them from being able to form valid legal marriages. In doing this it is in clear violation of the equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment which states that, "(n)o state shall ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws". [2]-[3] With this in mind the illegality of gay marriage violates the equal protection clause because it does not afford equal protection under the law to a certain group of people on the basis of their sexual orientation. Contention 4: Gay marriage bans violate the due process clause of the 14th amendment. The essence of the due process clause is surmised well in the following excerpt, "Due process alternatively due process of law or the process that is due, is the principle that the government must respect all of the legal rights that are owed to a person according to the law. Due process holds the government subservient to the law of the land, protecting individual persons from the state." [4] Given this understanding the illegality of gay marriage would be unconstitutional because it denies a certain group of people their legal right to marry. People have the right to life, liberty, and property under the due process clause and to deny these rights in any way without sound reasoning is unconstitutional. Furthermore, one does not have liberty if one is not allowed to marry the person of their choice. Therefore, we can conclude that gay marriage bans are unconstitutional. =================== Potential rebuttals addressed: The Offense Principle =================== Shall our government limit liberties on the basis that certain actions will offend others? Not if we wish to remain consistent with the bill of rights. At no point in the bill of rights is anyone guaranteed the right not to be offended. Secondly, people will inevitably take offense to nearly anything, which renders the offense principle entirely relative. The offense principle provides no objective basis for limiting liberty because different things will always offend different people. And if it were taken to its logical conclusion the offense principle could lead to us outlawing minority religions like Islam, pornography, mini skirts, chewing gum, backwards baseball hats and nearly anything imaginable. ========= Conclusion ========= If we seek to live in a more just society that follows the rule of law and embodies the virtues of compassion then gay marriage should be legalized. I will further elaborate on my arguments in my second round, but for know I will let Con present their case. Defining terms: Same-sex marriage is a term used to describe a legally or socially recognized marriage between two persons of the same biological sex or social gender. Other terms used to describe this type of recognition include gay marriage or gender-neutral marriage. http://en.wikipedia.org... (For the purpose of convenience the legalization of gay marriage would involve the entire United States.) Harm principle (as articulated by J.S. Mill)- a government can only limit the liberty and rights of its citizens in order to prevent citizens from harming each other. http://en.wikipedia.org... Sources: [1] http://www.bidstrup.com... (Point number 9) [2] http://en.wikipedia.org... [3] http://www.usconstitution.net... [4] http://en.wikipedia.org... Best, Freeman