Same-sex marriage

Same-sex marriage (also called gay marriage) is a legally or socially recognized marriage between two persons of the same biological sex or social gender.

Don't hide behind the Constitution or the Bible. If you're against gay marriage, just be honest, put a scarlet 'H' on your shirt, and say, 'I am a homophobe!' ~ Henry Rollins

Quotes

It's very dear to me, the issue of gay marriage. Or as I like to call it: marriage. You know, because I had lunch this afternoon, not “gay lunch”. I parked my car; I didn't “gay park” it. ~ Liz Feldman

Gay marriage won't lead to dog marriage. It is not a slippery slope to rampant inter-species coupling. When women got the right to vote, it didn't lead to hamsters voting. No court has extended the equal protection clause to salmon. And for the record, all marriages are “same sex” marriages. You get married, and every night, it's the same sex. ~ Bill Maher

Defenders of marriage
Defending the institution against people who wanna get married ~ Roy Zimmerman

F

• It's very dear to me, the issue of gay marriage. Or as I like to call it: marriage. You know, because I had lunch this afternoon, not “gay lunch”. I parked my car; I didn't “gay park” it.
  • Liz Feldman, quoted in Harper, Robyn (6 June 2012), "When I Get Married, Will It Be a 'Gay Marriage'?", The Huffington Post 

G

• Nonetheless, a kind of Gresham's law applies. Bad sex drives out the good, and the worst of all- philandering and homosexuality- are exalted. Gay liberation, pornographic glut, and one-night trysts are all indices of sexual frustration; all usually disclose a failure to achieve profound and loving sexuality. When a society deliberately affirms these failures: contemplates legislation of homosexual marriage, celebrates the women who denounce the family, and indulges pornography as a manifestation of sexual health and a release from repression- the culture is promoting a form of erotic suicide. For it is destroying the cultural preconditions of profound love and sexuality; the durable heterosexual relationships necessary to a community of emotional investments and continuities in which children can find a secure place.
  • George Gilder, Sexual Suicide (1973). New York: Quadrangle Books, p. 5

K

• Under the Constitution, same-sex couples seek in marriage the same legal treatment as opposite-sex couples, and it would disparage their choices and diminish their personhood to deny them this right.
  • Justice Anthony Kennedy, majority decision for Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. ___ (2015).

• Still it is true that many same-sex couples want nothing more than to join society as fully integrated socially responsible family-centered taxpaying Little League-coaching nation-serving respectably married citizens. So why not welcome them in? Why not recruit them by the vanload to sweep in on heroic wings and save the flagging and battered old institution of matrimony from a bunch of apathetic ne'er-do-well heterosexual deadbeats like me?
  • Elizabeth Gilbert (2010), Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace With Marriage, Viking 

M

• New Rule: Gay marriage won't lead to dog marriage. It is not a slippery slope to rampant inter-species coupling. When women got the right to vote, it didn't lead to hamsters voting. No court has extended the equal protection clause to salmon. And for the record, all marriages are “same sex” marriages. You get married, and every night, it's the same sex.
  • Bill Maher (2005), New Rules: Polite Musings from a Timid Observer 

• The people of Virginia have spoken by a margin of 57-43. They’ve already enshrined in the Virginia Constitution that gay marriage is not permitted, so unless there is another effort to change the Constitution, that matter is settled. That is the law of the land and, look, reasonable people can disagree on these things. That’s what the law is now. That’s something that I support. That was the right decision.
  • Bob McDonnell, statement from McDonnell at a press conference, referencing a referendum on 5 May 2011 wherein Virginia voters approved a proposed amendment to the Virginia constitution to ban same-sex marriage; the amendment was made unconstitutional in the ruling of Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015. As quoted by Anita Kumar, "McDonnell: Gay marriage ban was “the right decision”" (10 May 2011)

R

• Don't hide behind the Constitution or the Bible. If you're against gay marriage, just be honest, put a scarlet 'H' on your shirt, and say, 'I am a homophobe!'
  • Henry Rollins, Talk is Cheap Volume 1 (1998)

• The truth is, the notion that gay marriage is harmful to marriage, is sort of mind-boggling, because these are people trying to get married. But it seems to me, if you want to defend marriage against something, defend it against divorce.
  • Cokie Roberts, Real Time with Bill Maher, August 6, 2004.

R

• The exclusion of same-sex couples from the benefits and responsibilities of marriage, accordingly, is not a small and tangential inconvenience resulting from a few surviving relics of societal prejudice destined to evaporate like the morning dew. It represents a harsh if oblique statement by the law that same-sex couples are outsiders, and that their need for affirmation and protection of their intimate relations as human beings is somehow less than that of heterosexual couples.
  • Justice Albie Sachs, Minister of Home Affairs and Another v Fourie and Another, 1 December 2005.

Z

• Defenders of marriage
  Defending the institution against people who wanna get married
  • Roy Zimmerman (satirist), “Defenders of Marriage” (song) (1998), Faulty Intelligence (album)