The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is a United States federal law passed by the th United States Congress and signed into law by President Bill blogger.com defines marriage for federal purposes as the union of one man and one woman, and allows states to refuse to recognize same-sex marriages granted under the laws of other states. All of the act's provisions except The effect of legalizing gay marriage. The considerations before surgery. The career of Tiger Woods. The success of Simon Cowell. The influences of modern art. How Picasso inspired other artists. The importance of team work. How poverty affects society. Is the broken windows theory true? How stress can affect your health Jul 21, · Lesbian, Gay, Bi-Sxual, and Transgendered: Significance. Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender (LGBT) Society in Jordan. Legalizing Same Sex Marriage. Legalization of LGBT Marriages. Lebanon Must Pave the Way for LGBT Rights. Leaving The Closet Of College. Lawrence v. Texas and the History of Gay Rights. Is Gay Parenting Bad For Kids?
Defense of Marriage Act - Wikipedia
Marriage, legalizing gay marriage essay, a prominent institution regulating sex, reproduction, and family life, is a route into classical philosophical issues such as the good and the scope of individual choice, as well as itself raising distinctive philosophical questions.
Political philosophers have taken the organization of sex and reproduction to be essential to the health of the state, and moral philosophers have debated whether marriage has a special moral status and relation to the human good. Philosophers have also disputed the underlying moral and legal rationales for the structure of marriage, with implications for questions such as the content of its moral obligations and the legal recognition of same-sex marriage.
Likewise, debate over same-sex marriage has been highly charged. Unlike some contemporary issues sparking such wide interest, there is a long tradition of philosophical thought on marriage, legalizing gay marriage essay. Philosophical debate concerning marriage extends to what marriage, fundamentally, is; therefore, Section 1 examines its definition.
Many of the ethical positions on marriage can be understood as divided on the question of whether marriage should be defined contractually by the spouses or by its institutional purpose, and they further divide on whether that purpose necessarily includes procreation or may be limited to the marital love relationship.
Section 3 taxonomizes ethical views of marriage accordingly. Section 4 will examine rival political understandings of marriage law and its rationale, legalizing gay marriage essay. Discussion of marriage has played a central role in feminist philosophy; Section 5 will outline the foremost critiques of the institution.
History shows considerable variation in marital practices: polygyny has been widely practiced, some societies have approved of extra-marital sex and, arguably, recognized same-sex marriages, and religious or civil officiation has not always been the norm Boswell ; Mohr62; Coontz More fundamentally, while the contemporary Western ideal of marriage involves a relationship of love, friendship, or companionship, marriage historically functioned primarily as an economic and political unit used to create kinship legalizing gay marriage essay, control inheritance, and share resources and labor.
The understanding legalizing gay marriage essay marriage as grounded in individual choice and romantic love reflects historically and culturally situated beliefs and practices. Most notably, the aspect of consent or voluntary entry - often taken to be crucial to marriage Cott - is challenged where practices of forced or child marriage are prevalent Narayan ; Bhandary Arranged marriage, which is compatible with the consent of the spouses, prioritizes caregiving and economic aspects of the institution over romantic love Bhandary Religious, cultural, and philosophical traditions also shape ideals of marriage, legalizing gay marriage essay.
Ethical and political questions regarding marriage are sometimes answered legalizing gay marriage essay appeal to the definition of marriage. If marriage has no essential features, then one cannot appeal to definition to justify particular legal or moral obligations. For instance, if monogamy is not an essential feature of marriage, then one cannot appeal to the definition of marriage to justify a legalizing gay marriage essay that legal marriage be monogamous.
To a certain extent, legalizing gay marriage essay, the point that actual legal or social definitions cannot settle the question of what features marriage should have is just. Second, appeal to definition may be uninformative: for example, legal definitions are sometimes circular, defining marriage in terms of spouses and spouses in terms of marriage Mohr Third, appeal to an existing definition in the context of debate over what the law of marriage, or its moral obligations, should be risks begging the question: in debate over same-sex marriage, for example, appeal to the current legal definition begs the normative question of what the law should be.
However, this point also tells against the argument for the family resemblance view of marriage, as the variation of marital forms in practice does not preclude the existence of a normatively ideal form. Thus, legalizing gay marriage essay, philosophers who defend an essentialist definition of marriage offer normative definitions, which appeal to fundamental ethical or political principles.
Defining marriage must depend on, rather than precede, ethical and political inquiry. Setting the agenda for contemporary debate, ancient and medieval philosophers raised recurring themes in legalizing gay marriage essay philosophy of marriage: the relation between marriage and the state, the role of sex and procreation in marriage, and the gendered nature of spousal roles.
Their works reflect evolving, and overlapping, ideas of marriage as an economic or procreative unit, a religious sacrament, a contractual association, and a relationship of mutual support. In his depiction of the ideal state, Plato — BCE described a form of marriage contrasting greatly with actual marriage practices of his time.
To orchestrate eugenic breeding, legalizing gay marriage essay, temporary marriages would be made at festivals, where matches, apparently chosen by lot, would be secretly arranged by the Rulers. Resulting offspring would be taken from biological parents and reared anonymously in nurseries. Aristotle — BCE sharply criticized this proposal as unworkable. The state arises from component parts, beginning with the natural procreative union of male and female. It is thus a state of families rather legalizing gay marriage essay a family state, and its dependence on the functioning of individual households makes marriage essential to political theory Politicsb.
The Aristotelian idea that the stability of society depends on the marital family influenced Hegel, Rawls, and Sandel, among others. Aristotle also disagreed with Plato legalizing gay marriage essay gender roles in marriage, and these views too would prove influential.
In contrast to the ancients, whose philosophical discussion of sex and sexual love was not confined to marriage, Christian philosophers introduced a new focus on marriage as the sole permissible context for sex, marking a shift from viewing marriage as primarily a political and economic unit. Augustine —following St.
Paul, condemns sex outside marriage and lust within it. Instead, the reason for the individual marital sexual act determines its permissibility. Sex for the sake of procreation is not sinful, and sex within marriage solely to satisfy lust is a pardonable venial sin.
Thomas Aquinas ca. Marital sex employs the body for its purpose of preserving the species, and pleasure may be a divinely ordained part of this. Indeed, legalizing gay marriage essay see indications of discontent with the economic model of marriage a century earlier in the letters of Héloïse ca.
The relation between love and marriage will continue to preoccupy later philosophers. Do marital obligations and economic incentives threaten love, as Héloïse suggested? Or, instead, does marital commitment uniquely enable spousal love, as Aquinas suggested? Finnis ; cf. Questions of the relation between love and marriage emerge from changing understandings of the role of marriage; in the early modern era, further fault lines appear as new understandings of human society conflict legalizing gay marriage essay the traditional structure of marriage.
For Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas, marriage was unproblematically structured by sexual difference, and its distinctive features explained by nature or sacrament. But in the early modern era, legalizing gay marriage essay, as doctrines of equal rights and contract appeared, a new ideal of relationships between adults as free choices between equals appeared.
In this light, the unequal and unchosen content of the marriage relationship raised philosophical problems. For there is not always that difference of strength, or prudence between the man and the woman, as that the right can be determined without war.
Likewise, defending marital hierarchy posed a problem for John Locke — as they must be if the being subjected to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, arbitrary Will of Men, be the perfect Condition of Slavery? The contractual understanding of marriage prompts the question as to why marital obligations should be fixed other than by spousal agreement.
Immanuel Kant — combined a contractual account of marriage with an Augustinian preoccupation with sexual morality to argue that the distinctive content of the marriage contract was required to make sex permissible. Kant interestingly suggests that morally problematic relationships can be reconstructed through equal juridical rights, but how such reconstruction occurs is puzzling HermanBrake Characteristically, G.
that of individual personality as a self-sufficient unit— in order to supersede it. Like his predecessors, Hegel must justify the distinctive features of marriage, and in particular, why, if it is the ethical love relationship which is ethically significant, formal marriage is necessary. For Hegel, ethical love depends on publicly assuming spousal roles which define individuals as members in a larger unit. Such unselfish membership links marriage and the state. The role of marriage is to prepare men to relate to other legalizing gay marriage essay as sharers in a legalizing gay marriage essay enterprise.
In legalizing gay marriage essay family relationships as conditions for good citizenship, Hegel follows Aristotle and influences Rawls and Sandel; it is also notable that he takes marriage as a microcosm of the state. Kant legalizing gay marriage essay Hegel attempted to show that the distinctive features of marriage could be explained and justified by foundational normative principles. In contrast, early feminists argued that marital hierarchy was simply an unjust remnant of a pre-modern era.
This example of an inequality based on force had persisted so long, Mill argued, because all men had an interest in retaining it. Like Wollstonecraft, Mill described the ideal marital relationship as one of equal friendship Abbey and Den Uyl, But marital inequality was a school of injustice, teaching boys unearned privilege and corrupting future citizens. The comparison of marriage with slavery has been taken up by more recent feminists Cronanas has the argument that marital injustice creates unjust citizens Okin Marxists also saw marriage as originating in ancient legalizing gay marriage essay of force and as continuing to contribute to the exploitation of women.
Monogamy allowed men to control women and reproduction, thereby facilitating the intergenerational transfer of private property by producing undisputed heirs. The Marxist linking of patriarchy and capitalism, in particular its understanding of marriage as an ownership relation ideologically underpinning the capitalist order, has been especially influential in legalizing gay marriage essay thought Patemancf. McMurtry The idea that marriage has a special moral status and entails fixed moral obligations is widespread—and philosophically controversial.
Marriage is a legal contract, legalizing gay marriage essay, although an anomalous one see 4. The contractual view of marriage implies that spouses can choose marital obligations to suit their interests. However, to some, the value of marriage consists precisely in the limitations it sets on individual choice in the service of a greater good: thus, Hegel commented that arranged marriage is the most ethical form of marriage because it subordinates personal choice to the institution.
These theories have implications for the moral status of extra-marital sex and divorce, as well as the purpose of marriage. On the contractual view, the moral terms and obligations of marriage are understood as promises between spouses. Their content is supplied by surrounding social and legal practices, but their promissory nature implies that parties to the promise can negotiate the terms and release each other from marital obligations.
One rationale for treating marital obligations as such promises might be thought to be the voluntaristic account of obligation. On this view, all special obligations as opposed to general duties are the result of voluntary undertakings; promises are then the paradigm of special obligations see entry on Special Obligations. Thus, whatever special obligations spouses have to one another must originate in voluntary agreement, best understood as promise. We will return to this below.
A second rationale is the assumption that existing marriage practices are morally arbitrary, in the sense that there is no special moral reason for their structure. Further, there are diverse social understandings of marriage.
If the choice between them is morally arbitrary, there is no moral reason for spouses to adopt one specific set of marital obligations; it is up to spouses to choose their terms. Thus, the contractual account depends upon the assumption that there is no decisive moral reason for a particular marital structure.
On the contractual account, not just any contracts count as marriages. The default content of marital promises is supplied legalizing gay marriage essay social and legal practice: sexual exclusivity, legalizing gay marriage essay, staying married, and so on.
But it entails that spouses may release one another from these moral obligations. For example, extra-marital sex has often been construed as morally wrong by virtue of promise-breaking: if spouses promise sexual exclusivity, extra-marital sex breaks a promise and is thereby prima facie wrong.
However, if marital obligations are simply promises between the spouses, then the parties can release one another, making consensual extra-marital sex permissible Wasserstrom Marriage is also sometimes taken to involve a promise to stay married.
This seems to make unilateral divorce morally problematic, as promisors cannot release themselves from promissory obligations Morse But standard conditions for overriding promissory obligations, such as conflict with more stringent moral duties, inability to perform, or default by the other party to a reciprocal promise would permit at least some unilateral divorces HoulgateChapter Some theorists of marriage have suggested that marital promises are conditional on enduring love or fulfilling sex MarquisMoller But this assumption is at odds with the normal assumption that promissory conditions are to be stated explicitly.
Gay Marriage Essay
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Jul 19, · 9. Sex Before Marriage. Is it morally right to have sex before marriage? What are the arguments for it? Why should teenagers avoid sex until after marriage? LGBTQ Rights. Should gay marriages be legalized all over the world? What ways can be used to encourage countries that are uncomfortable with the idea of gay marriages? Media and Fear Jan 04, · Gay Marriages Argumentative Essay Outline. Introduction. Thesis: Same-sex marriage should be legal because it is a fundamental human right. Body. Paragraph 1: Same-sex marriage provides legal rights protection to same sex couples on such matters as taxes, finances, and health care Jul 21, · Lesbian, Gay, Bi-Sxual, and Transgendered: Significance. Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender (LGBT) Society in Jordan. Legalizing Same Sex Marriage. Legalization of LGBT Marriages. Lebanon Must Pave the Way for LGBT Rights. Leaving The Closet Of College. Lawrence v. Texas and the History of Gay Rights. Is Gay Parenting Bad For Kids?
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