Al Gore Speaks Out in Support of Gay Marriage

I salute Al Gore for having the guts to release this video in support of gay marriage. I wonder if he would have done the same had he been president?

I have yet to hear one solid argument, backed up by statistical evidence, that shows any reason whatsoever why gay marriage would be detrimental to individuals or society. On the other hand, every single argument I have heard made against gay marriage has, at its root, religiously-rooted fear and bigotry.

That said, my libertarian belief is that people should be allowed to dislike whomever they choose, and religious institutions should be free to refuse to marry whomever they choose.

But with marriage being a social contract based in law, with special rights provided to individuals who sign that contract, it is clearly discriminatory for gay men and women to not be allowed to make the same social contract as their heterosexual fellow citizens.

There are over a thousand federal laws that treat married people differently from single people, in all spheres of society. Allowing special rights to pairs of individuals only if they are heterosexual is discrimination any way you look at it.

So how do you allow people to remain bigoted within their religious institutions and not translate this bigotry into the laws of the land? My answer is to remove marriage from the law. Marriage should be considered a religious practice that is managed by religious institutions.

"So if gay people can get married," I've heard, "why not brothers and sisters?"...To which I respond, "Why not?"

The social contract in American law that provides special rights to interested pairs of individuals should have nothing to do with romantic and sexual intimacy. Any two individuals should be able to participate in this social contract if they meet reasonable criteria (for example, be of legal age and living under the same roof).

While people married within their religious institutions would usually also commit to a civil union, there would be no necessary relationship between the two. As such, gay couples would be allowed the same - and by that I mean the exact same - rights as heterosexual couples in the eyes of the law, without offending the archaic religious opposition that most individuals appear to have against gay marriage.