Same-Sex Marriage
...arriage licenses, they were followed by a cluster of disenchanted anti-gay picketers as well. Since then it has become a heated debate. A poll was taken in Los Angeles, California and the results show that one third believe that same sex marriages should be legal.3The results also show that almost half of the California population who did support gay marriages were between the ages of 18 and 29.4 In two weeks, 3,000 gay marriages took place in San Francisco and 66 in New Mexico.9 Doug Kmiec, a scholar at Pepperdine University school of Law claimed that people are getting false hopes about same-sex marriages because of people in New Mexico and San Francisco who are distributing licenses. He says that these licenses aren’t being distributed properly because no state including California has fully legalized same-sex marriages.10 February 24, 2004 was the day that Bush proclaimed his decision to amend a banning on same-sex laws. Bush made it clear that even though he wished to ban gay marriages, he would keep civil union wide open. 1Bush believes that if same-sex marriages are made legal that the meaning of it will be changed forever. His motive for the banning of gay marriages becoming an amendment is so that individual states will not have the opportunity to set up their own gay marriage laws. 2Democratic National Chairman Terry McAuliffe stated that how wrong it was to use the constitution to discriminate against others and how he is using gays as an “election bid.” 3 Front-runner for the democratic presidential nomination, senator John Kerry believes that Bush has no right to involve himself in state matters. 4 Even though democrats don’t support gay marriages as well, but they don’t want to “amend” it, they just want to “ban it by statute.”12.Many people believe Bush’s proposal is not likely to happen because congress believes it’s unconstitutional. 13 The Constitution says: “That full faith and credit shall be given in each state to the public acts and records and judicial proceedings of every other state.”17 To have the Constitution amended take much time and effort. Two-thirds majority is needed from both the house and senate and to have something ratified requires three-fourths or 38 out of 50 states. In 1971, the voting age was lowered from 21 to 18. A proposal for equal rights was rejected in 1982, and the latest amendment, which has only recently been rediscovered, was ratified in 1992. This new addition states the amount of money congress gets paid. 22The Constitution has only been amended 17 times even though its been around for the past 215 years. 2A s...