Civil rights movements and historical significance

Civil Right

Gay Marriage: A Modern Civil Rights Issue

One of the most controversial issues in the United States today is that of gay marriage. The country is split nearly in half between those who believe that homosexual partners should have the right to be legally married and those who believe that marriage signifies a moral contract between a man and a woman, and that allowing gay marriage would corrupt the institution of marriage. Despite the split among the population regarding this issue, there are actually better guarantees of rights for homosexuals now -- and a better consensus that sexual orientation should be a category protected by civil rights just like race, religion, and nationality are (Cornell).

The battle for including sexual orientation under the umbrella of civil rights has largely been fought in the courts, using the judicial branch of the government. The executive branch has had very little to do with this issue, and most efforts in the legislative branch have been working against protecting sexual orientation. Highlighting the differences between the legislative and judicial branches in this regard is the instance of Colorado's state constitutional amendment. This amendment made it illegal for any authority within the state to protect homosexuals specifically. This extreme legislative measure was subsequently deemed illegal by the U.S. Supreme Court because it was "the product of simple prejudice and served no legitimate purpose" (Stanford). Modern judicial interpretations have tended to side with protecting gay rights.

For two hundred and twenty four years, homosexual activity was actually illegal in the United States (Head par. 2). This was not unusual; most European countries also had laws against homosexuality. These laws were not often acted upon, however, except when a relationship became a scandal. Still, their presence in the law influenced legislation heavily over the decades.

In fact, it was not until 2003 that such laws were finally deemed illegal, again by a court decision. In the case of Lawrence v. Texas, the Texas laws against sodomy were stricken down as to invasive of privacy, which was protected by the Fourteenth Amendment (Head par. 21). Until this point, many states had laws that limited conduct between people of the same sex. These were often viewed as in the same category of laws that protected minors from sexual abuse. It should also be noted that laws limiting sexual interaction between people of different races were considered as morally important at a fairly recent time in this country's history.

One of the reasons that gay rights took so much longer to achieve -- and in fact they still are not fully protected, and do not have the same rights as other individuals -- is because the issue was not as clear cut as it is for gender, race, and other areas of protection (Stanford). One of the main causes behind this is that for a long time, it was assumed that homosexuality was actually a type of mental illness, and that engaging in homosexual behavior would be detrimental to the participants' health. But in 1973, the American Psychological Association announced that they would be removing homosexuality from the list of recognized mental illnesses, as growing numbers of researchers and doctors realized that it represented fairly normal sexual behavior (Head par. 17).

A quick bit of simple arithmetic can tell you that it still took thirty years after the medical community determined that homosexuality was not dangerous or especially abnormal for the law to catch up. And in many instances, there still aren't laws protecting gays. All that the Supreme Court ruling did was ban laws that banned homosexual behavior; they cannot make laws to protect gay rights.

This has been the major issue plaguing the civil rights of homosexuals. Until the legislative branch of the government becomes involved in mandating that certain rights are protected, nothing that the judicial branch does will ever really be secure. This was shown most recently in California, in a case before the voters of that state that caught national attention. Some time before the general election last November, the state supreme court in California had ruled that same-sex couples' civil rights were being violated by not being allowed to be married. This effectively created a loophole in the marriage laws that allowed same-sex couples all the rights and privileges of heterosexual married couples, without actually establishing any laws that protected these rights. Many accused the court of being too activist, and of using their judicial powers to circumvent the legislative process, and this argument ahs some merit.