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Same-Sex Marriage

Decent Essays

Same-Sex Marriage: The Problems with DOMA and the Pursuit for Equality

Believe it or not, same-sex marriage has been around since ancient times. At least two Roman Emperors, Nero and Elagabalus, were in gay unions. It wasn’t until the advent of Christianity that the practice of same sex marriage was out-lawed by the emperors Constantius II and Constans in 342 AD and has continued to be through-out most of the world until the twenty-first century (Boswell 83). With the advent of gay rights movement in many industrialized countries, same-sex marriage has become more accepted. A prime example of this is what lawmakers in the state of New York did on June 24, 2011. With a thirty-three to twenty-nine vote, the legislature legalized …show more content…

This includes the family home, without incurring any taxes

In contrast to the legislation of DOMA, The United States Supreme Court has repeatedly held that marriage is one of the most fundamental rights that we have as Americans under our Constitution. As Justice Ginsburg famously noted in 1996 that the history of our constitution is the history of extending constitutional protections to those who were once ignored or excluded from American Society. United States v. Virginia, 518 U.S. 515 (1996). Furthermore, The Harvard Law Review in 2004 pointed out

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