It is 2014. We have Twitter, Google Glass, Nutella, freedom of speech and the list could go on and on. The thing is there is something big on that list that we are missing, that's marriage equality. To me, I see no harm in a man marrying a man or a woman marrying a woman. I am a straight 17-year-old young woman saying, you should be allowed to marry whomever you may chose.
I understand there are millions of arguments for and against gay marriage or even the idea of a man with a man and a woman with a woman in a romantic relationship. My thought is: It is love. Love by definition is an intense feeling of deep affection. I understand that religion or what you believe in or other kinds of influence might change how you think about love. To me, love is the feeling humans can have that allows us to make the truest of connections to another human being. Being truly in love with another person is already rare enough why try to diminish other people's love for their significant others just because of their sexual orientation.
I've never understood the criticism that gay marriage is considered less legitimate. Most of the time, not all the time, marriage is something serious. It's a commitment to another human being for a life time. Whether a man and a woman get married or a gay couple or a lesbian couple get married, they should be considered a legally married couple. They love each other enough to want to make this commitment to one another. That's where my confusion and frustration has always come. No matter what your sexual orientation is, you are a human being with the ability to make decisions, those decisions should be respected not only in the eyes of others but by the law.
Love between all human beings is a beautiful thing. Why do we still want to put restrictions and boundaries on something that is not controllable? Who we love comes from within our soul. We should not be told who we can and can not love openly in marriage. The perspective that we can be told who we can legally and can't legally marry seems just ignorant. It is not possible to stop a feeling. You can put restrictions on how people act upon those feelings only so much. In many states in the US and in countries all over the world, gay marriage has been legalized. I live in a state where gay marriage is legal. I'm proud of that.
I hope one day we won't have to fight this hard for marriage equality. Look, we still suffer from racism even after the civil rights movement. This is not going to be an easy fight but it's definitely a worthwhile one. Sexual orientation, plain and simple, should not have an influence on the decision of who can be married in the eyes of others and the law.