Human Rights at Home and Abroad: Past, Present, and Future

ability to be married without any form of discrimination, but for some reason same-sex couples have been
left out of this right. Marriage is not a realistic thing to them. The right for homosexuals to marry has not
yet happened in the United States. This is the one basic human right that seems to be unchanging for
homosexuals in the U.S. and causing this extremely controversial topic to be never ending. It seems that
no matter what is being done to overturn this provision against homosexuals the right for these couples to
marry is still being denied to them. Same-sex couples do not have the option to be married based solely
on their sexual orientation. Richard Mohr the author of the book The Long Arc of Justice: Lesbians and
Gay Marriage, Equality And Rights states that ―paradigmatic of the denial of queer equality is the
indignity of offering the consolation prize of ‗civil unions‘ rather than marriage for same-sex couples‖
(Cuomo, 2007, p.83). Chris Cuomo also quotes Mohr by saying, ―the full right to gay marriage as a
remedy that would establish an important freedom but also help establish dignity, by removing the
indignity of that secondary status, and forced complicity with legal structures that maintain inequality‖
(2007, p. 84). Some states in the United States seems to think that by offering civil unions to same-sex
couples instead of marriages that it would silence the voices of those who believe same-sex couples
should be able to be considered a legally joined couple. Did those governments really think that this
would happen? Marriage is recognized throughout the entire country and is protected by federal laws
while civil unions are only protected under the laws of the state that they live in, which has to be a state
that recognizes civil unions. Another fact about civil unions is that these couples have no way of
separated once committing to each other. People who are married have the option of divorce, where as
once two people join a civil union there is no way to eliminate their agreement to each other. Another
difference between marriages and civil unions is that since the federal government does not recognize
civil unions, same-sex couples must fill out forms as a single family and not as partners. This separation
establishes that some of the American people cannot come to an agreement that everyone, including
homosexuals, should have the same human rights.
The United Kingdom‘s government appears to have similar beliefs he issue of same-sex marriage
as the United States. It looks as if this basic human right is the only one that homosexuals are still be
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