social security and Medicare” (Graff 1). Take the case of Joe and John: Joe entered the emergency room complaining of chest pains. When John was denied entrance to the Intensive Care Unit to stand by his partner’s side, he was forced in a time of profound crisis to embark on a desperate battle for the simple right to visit his partner of twenty-five years. Two days later, John received a call telling him to pick up Joe’s body from the morgue. Joe had died from cardiac arrest the day after he was admitted (1). One last important reason to grant marriage to same sex couples would be to discourage promiscuous sex. It is a well known fact that the Acquired Immuno Deficiency (AIDS) spreads rapidly among people that engage in sexual intercourse with multiple partners of their own gender, more commonly known among, but definitely not limited to, homosexual Caucasian males. Marriage hinders this promiscuity and therefore slows the spread of sexually transmitted diseases such as AIDS. These diseases “know no sexual orientation and are equal opportunity destroyers”(Halsal 3). Realistic reasons, such as these, should really be something to consider when demanding or denying same-sex marriages.To put it briefly, having the state deny one person’s love for another legally is wrong. It has been segregating people for centuries and today it is sending appalling messages to the youth about discrimination. The word marriage truly has too many definitions to only recognize one in a diverse culture such as the United States. Lastly, denying civil marriage is denying very basic civil rights to civil people. A man named Harry S. Truman could not have put it better when he said, “In the case of freedom, we have to battle for the rights of people with whom we do not agree; and whom, in many cases, we may not like. These people test the strength of the freedoms, which protect us all. If we do not defend ...
