The Case for Gay and Lesbian Marriage

"Courts and legislatures grant a heterosexual couple the legal right to marry. (Krause 37) Why has this legal right not been extended to include gay and lesbian couples? The legal definition of family has no doubt broadened... Even the legal substitutes for marriage, common-law marriage and marriage by contract or declaration, have been denied to gay and lesbian couples, while available under some jurisdictions to heterosexual couples. Is this prohibition of same-sex marriage constitutionally justifiable? Are the proposed interests of states in prohibiting same-sex marriage justifiable by the standards of constitutional law? These two questions will structure the course of the argument to follow in favor of legitimizing gay and lesbian marriage."--from pages 26-2