by Jericho Garrett

Created on: November 12, 2008

The question surrounding the legality of gay marriage really is not about the legality, but the perceived morality of such a union. It is unfathomable in this day and age that whether two people who love each other should or should not be allowed to marry, but the argument still persists, often promulgated by those who use the Bible as the basis for their reasoning. The two most commonly used rationalizations are that the marital union, according to the Bible, is between one man and one woman, and that the purpose of marriage is procreation, to further the human race. However, both arguments are easily proven to be fundamentally unsound, and engaging these arguments into the debate introduces a whole plethora of additional legal and ethical issues.

The first issue that must be addressed when dealing with the subject of gay marriage is the religious one, since the most common objection is that God made man for woman and woman for man, to be joined as one in marriage until death. While this is a wonderfully romantic notion, it is, in reality, a fairly recent one, and has not proven to be the case in either world history or religious history. Truth is in biblical times, women were nothing more than property; chattel, if you will, and marriages were often arranged based on what the woman's (since the woman could not own anything herself) family had and could contribute to the marriage. This practice was common even into more modern times, and arranged marriages and doweries still are not a total thing of the past. Polygamy was also routinely practiced in biblical times, and divorce was not unheard of.

Furthermore, while the word "homosexual' is not used in the Bible, there are references to homosexuality as a sin in the Bible; that fact has been well documented and is not in dispute. However, there are several "sins" in the Bible that people not only disregard in today's society, but would find absolutely ridiculous if told by some religious zealot they were sinning by engaging in these acts. For example, how many people realize that when they are enjoying the all you can eat shrimp at Sizzler, they are violating laws regarding the consumption of shellfish as set forth in Leviticus 11: 9-12 and Deuteronomy 14: 9-10? Or that, according to the books of Leviticus and Ezekiel, a man sharing his bed with his menstruating wife can be punished by banishment for both from his people? According to 1 Timothy, women should not wear hair or clothes like a man, yet many "Christian"

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