Homosexual means to be characterized by a tendency to direct sexual desire toward another of the same sex. Marriage is an act of joining or the rite by which the married status is officially effective: especially the wedding ceremony and attendant festivities or formalities. When both words are put together, you have what is known as "Gay Marriages."

Nowadays, homosexuals seem to be quite open about their relationships and their standing in the public eye. They are treated like normal people most of the time. I don not know why there should be any misunderstandings about what rights gay people should or should not have. But when it comes down to marriage, they are "allowed" to have all the rights besides that one when we, "normal" people are not "allowed" to get married, but that privilege is granted to us. I do not understand why gay people do not have that same privilege. Why do they have to fight for it?

Here are some of the reasons why people think that gays should not have the privilege to marry the person they love.

First of all, they say that marriage is an institution between one man and one woman. Well, that is the most often heard argument, one even codified in a recently passed U.S. federal law, yet it is easily the weakest. Who has the right to define marriage? The ones who are married? Men and women who are capable of getting married? It seems that if the straight community cannot provide a compelling reason to deny the institution of marriage to gay people, it should not be denied. Such simple, nebulous declarations are hardly a compelling reason. They are really more like an expression of prejudice than any kind of a real argument. The concept of not denying people their rights unless a compelling reason can be shown, to do so is the very basis of the American ideal of human rights.

Second of all, they say gay relationships are immoral. Who says so? The Bible? The Bible contradicts itself in so many ways. The Bible has absolutely no standing in American law. So why are they passing laws by what it says in the Bible? Not all world religions have a problem with homosexuality. Many sects, like Buddhist, for example, celebrate gay relationships freely and would like to have the authorities to make them legal marriages.

Why are people making such a big deal about gay marriages, how immoral they are, and how the Bible says it is not right? How it is unconstitutional. But what people do not see, or maybe do not want to see is how there are other types of marriages out there that are not the typical "man and woman" marriage, and are not getting half of the publicity that gay marriages are getting.

If marriage is for a man and a woman, why isn't it against the law to perform marriages that are not "normal"?

Mixed marriages, are marriages between persons of different races or religions.

Open Marriages, are marriages in which the partners agree to let each other have sexual partners outside the marriage.

There are those kinds of marriages where the man has more than one wife or the woman has more then one husbands.

I do not see the law chasing them down because some people think that that type of marriage is not right. Are they really considered "normal" marriages because, even if they are different, they still consist of a man and a woman, therefore, they are in their right to get married, so says the law? I believe that if two people love each other, they should get married.

Third, same-sex marriages would threaten the institution of marriage, which is contradictory. Threaten marriage? Allowing people of the same sex get married is a threat to marriage? That does not sound very logical to me. If you allow gay people to marry each other, you no longer have to encourage them to marry people to whom they do not feel attraction towards, with whom they most often cannot relate sexually, and thereby the number of supposed heterosexual marriages that end up in the divorce courts will be reduced.

If you do not like the idea of gay marriages, then do not attend them. Those narrow minded people who think that marriage is for everybody except gays should just stay in their little house away from the world today.

This is the 21st century. The times of prejudice and discrimination are long gone. This is the time of our life where you should not have to be afraid to be yourself, homosexual or not. The medieval times to where you would have been punished for thinking differently from all the rest are over.

Fourth, granting gays the right to marry is a "special" right. Why should there be a "special" right for gays to marry? Ninety percent of the population already has the right to marry. Why go through all the hassle in passing a law to let gays get married? It is just an excuse to prolong the law or not to pass such a law. Just wait until all the hype of gay marriages is over, if that will ever happen and hoping that if they wait long enough to pass such a law, people will just forget about that law altogether.

Now, here are some of the real reasons society denies gays the privilege to get married. They just do not want to admit it.

Some people are just not comfortable with the idea. So what? I am not comfortable with the idea of people getting married for convenience or because they are obligated to, or those marriages where one man has more then one wife, yet, I do not see any law being passed to deny those people of that right just because I am not comfortable with the idea.

It offends everything religion stands for. Why is that so? Religion is not part of everybody's world. The American laws should not have anything to do with what is in the Bible. And who's religion does it offend? Not everybody's religion is offended and not accepting of the concept same sex marriages.

Marriage is a sacred institution. That is what I think also. Marriage is a sacred institution, which should be performed between two people who love each other and are there for that person through thick and thin. If society sees marriage such a sacred institution, why are there so many different types of marriages that are not just one man and one woman, and they are not being hunted down by the law. What is wrong with two people of the same sex loving each other and wanting to legally be with one another?

People think that homosexuals might "recruit." Now this one is one of the silliest reasons I have heard of. Most gays respect one's opinion about their sexual orientation since they have gone through hell and back again trying to determine their sexual preference. So they can show society who they really are. I think that the origin of this reason is just pure fear of the unknown. If you are scared of being "recruited" into transforming yourself into a homosexual, that usually means that you are not certain what your sexual orientation is, and are scared to admit that you really are either homosexual, or a homophobic.

Gay people say that this is a civil rights issue. Here are a few of them.

They are referring to matters like the fact that we cannot make medical decisions for our partners in an emergency. Instead, hospitals are usually forced by state laws to go to the families who may be estranged from us for decades. They are often hostile to us, and totally ignore our wishes for the treatment of our partners. If that hostile family wishes to exclude us from the hospital room, they may legally do so in nearly all cases. It is even not uncommon for hostile families to make decisions based on their hostility -- with results actually intended to be in total opposite to the interests and needs of the patient! Is this fair?

If our partners are arrested, we can be compelled to testify against them or provide evidence against them, which legally married couples are not forced to do. Is this fair?

In many cases, even carefully drawn wills and durable powers of attorney have not proven to be enough if a family wishes to challenge a will, overturn a custody decision, or exclude him or her from a funeral or deny him or her the right to visit a partner's grave. As survivors, they can even seize a real estate property that the couple may have been paying together for years, quickly sell it at a huge loss and stick him or her with the remaining debt on a property him or her no longer own. Is this fair?

These are not just theoretical issues either, they happen with surprising frequency. Almost any older gay couple can tell you horror stories of friends who have been victimized in such ways.

These are all civil rights issues that have nothing to do with the ecclesiastical origins of marriage; they are matters that have become enshrined in state laws over the years in many ways that exclude us from the rights that legally married couples enjoy and they have consider their constitutional rights. This is why we say it is very much a civil rights issue. It has nothing to do with who performs the ceremony or whether an announcement is accepted for publication in the local paper. It is not a matter of "special rights" to ask for the same rights that other couples enjoy by law, even by constitutional mandate.

To conclude, everybody has the right to fall in love, be with whoever he or she wishes to be. Everybody has the right to legally bind his or her love for one another. The same way straight people like that idea, homosexuals like that idea also. They should not be set aside because of their way of thinking. If gay marriages upset someone, they should learn how to deal with it. There are things that people do that upsets other people, yet Congress is not passing a law to deny the people of their happiness. People should just learn how to deal with it. Everybody deserves the right to be happy in his or her own way.