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the Southerner Online

An upbeat website for a downtown school

the Southerner Online

An upbeat website for a downtown school

the Southerner Online

Sierra Pape (left), James Howard, Meredith Bell, and Lucia Olivera (right) work a table for SODA club in the courtyard during lunch on Valentines Day to help register more organ donors on National Organ Donor Day.
New club advocates for youth organ donation registration
Abby IppenMarch 26, 2024

Student Organ Donation Advocates (SODA) is a nonprofit that inspires and supports student-led organ, eye and tissue donation education. This...

Civil rights must include gay marriage

By Hannah Martin

With the Supreme Court’s decision about gay marriage breathing down our back, you’ve got to wonder why there is even a decision that has to be made. Why should a couple not have the right to be married because they are gay? What reasons are there for not supporting gay marriage?

While I can’t answer these questions, I will provide a strong argument against them. There is absolutely no reason that a loving couple should not be married. Many protesters provide the defense that it goes against the Bible, but why is a society as developed as ours even following the rules of a text written thousands of years ago? The whole point of founding the United States was to separate us from the Church of England; in other words, our country was founded upon the idea of separation of Church and state, so why are we letting religion interfere with civil rights? Nobody said that Churches had to marry a gay or lesbian couple; it’s the responsibility of the government to legally marry a couple. Marriage does not have to have any religious ties. In fact, the process of matrimony in a courthouse never once uses the word “God,” or “Jesus,” not even “Allah”; it’s a strictly legal matter involving no religious obligation. It is simply a procedure that commits two people to one another by law.

The same people who yell those chants of hatred, “Fags doom nations,” “You’re going to Hell,” “Thank God for AIDS,”  and “Sin & Shame, not Pride,” are the very same groups of people who protested against Women’s suffrage, Civil Rights, and desegregation. These are the same people you see in textbook examples of merciless hatred, bombing churches, burning down houses, harassing people for being what they cannot help to be. Gays and lesbians have no choice in choosing their sexuality, so why should we have a say in whether or not they can marry? The condescending choices of our government are the same choices that allowed racism to prevail in the decades that have passed. Why have some not learned from our mistakes?

The fact that nobody protests against divorce and remarriage is curious. The Bible some of you look to clearly states that remarriage is adultery. The Bible also says that you should only divorce your wife (apparently, only men can choose to divorce!) if you find out that she was not a virgin upon marriage. Barbarism, much? I have no problem against Christianity nor its followers, but, hey, if we’re going to abide by one radical biblical law, why not abide by them all? No re-marrying. No dancing. Feel free to own a slave, and while you’re at it, puncture his hand to make sure everybody knows he is yours!

I don’t know about you, but I, for one, think it’s ridiculous to take the Bible so seriously in one way and ignore the more gruesome parts. It’s totally fine to look to the Bible for a moral code, or to be a loving Christian. You’re doing nothing wrong there. The only aspect I find so ridiculous is the sheer hypocrisy committed by those “loving” people, like those at Chick-fil-A. I can see how you would (religiously) disagree with homosexuality, or how you could find it wrong to marry a gay couple in your church. Whatever you follow shouldn’t be violated. But to not allow someone to love another person in their entirety, to deny an individual the civil right of being married just because they are gay, is pure hatred. Being married is a right, not a privilege, and should not be interfered with because of religion.

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Civil rights must include gay marriage