by Amy Rebeiro

Created on: June 10, 2010   Last Updated: February 22, 2011

Semantics. Ultimately, marriage and civil unions are the same thing. What should be asked is, what is the definition of marriage and where did it come from?  Does it exlude homosexuals? The laws that the United States created regarding marriage do not necessarily exclude any one group of people.  But when discussing the issue of homosexuals rights to marriage, its amazing that many people are not talking about the separation between church and state.  Religion should have no input on laws that govern men.  One, because our constitution stipulates so, and because there are so many different religions with conflicting laws that it is not fair to impose ones beliefs over another. But, to those of you who can't make the distinction, here is my argument.

The bible has a lot of laws that we no longer deem relevant to society today. The Old Testament says that women, after childbirth, need to be separated from the population for a specified period of time, 33 days if she had a boy, 66 days if she had a girl. It also states that women need to separate from men during the time of their menstrual cycle. How many people still follow this biblical law? Western society has made enough medical advancements that it knows there is no medical reason to continue this law. It's no longer relevant, and therefore we do not follow it anymore.

With respect to marriage, in the Old Testament, men could have multiple wives. Jacob not only had multiple wives, but he also had multiple concubines as well that gave him children. These children were never deemed illegitimate just because Jacob was not married to these women. Today, we've outlaw polygamy. This argument is not one for whether monogamy or polygamy are natural, but only to show that the law of marriage has evolved and changed not because the bible says its wrong, but because society evolved and deemed it illegal. This was a societal decision.

What many fail to acknowledge is that society has already moved away from biblical laws. Many of them unknown to the general population. What is interesting to note, even the laws of the bible evolved. The laws of Noah, to the laws of Moses, changed because "God" deemed it necessary to make specific laws of greater value than others. The 10 commandments, the basic laws that we are governed by, does not say anything about homosexuality. The fact of the matter is, the concept of marriage has evolved, like many concepts from the bible. We know that women are not unclean, although the bible tells us women are dirty. The bible tells us not to eat shell fish, or pig, but today we have found proper ways of cooking these items, and many religious institutions do not keep the law of Kashrut.

Societies job is evolve and grow, to get better and more educated. But many fall back on biblical arguments when, in fact, many of those people have determined some laws unimportant and others of higher importance, but based on what? Their own self imposed idea of what is right and wrong. I would argue that it is time for people to evolve on the concept of marriage. I do not care if you believe it is unnatural or not, the fact of the matter is, people have the right to be people, and our constitution gives the right to privacy. Society has formulated the evolution of laws, why can't we evolve on the concept of homosexuals having the right to marry? The law should be all people have the right to marriage.

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