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Your letters: Same-sex marriage and its future
Whether or not you back it, we could all feel the euphoria sweeping across the globe on and after June 26, when the US Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage
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hether or not you back it, we could all feel the euphoria sweeping across the globe on and after June 26, when the US Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage.
The US, as the so-called leader of the world, has placed itself as a leading example on advancing and putting more emphasis on the importance of human rights, as the right to marry and form a family is always part of human rights, regardless of people's sexual preferences.
We can see now that this legal system has erased the differing lines between 'opposite-sex marriage' and 'same-sex marriage': there is neither.
There is only 'marriage', which reflects equality at its best. I myself view this as a success of putting the needs and will of human beings in the highest place of all, but I also have a hypothesis about what could happen next, some kind of prediction.
As a follow-on effect of this law, human beings are regarded as human beings, respected and viewed equally no matter their sexual preferences. Everyone can marry as they agree to live together on the basis of emotional bonds, and have his or her relationship registered by the government.
Sexual preference is a private sphere: one has a full right to decide with which gender one would like to be married to, and has the right to have a relationship protected legally and to obtain civil society benefits. Marriages can be equal, in the case of civil society life.
However, if we look at the 'traditional' definition and the essence of marriage, it was always the union of a man a woman who agreed to live together in a (maybe) lifetime contract on the basis of emotional bonds.
And, what makes it essential is that this relationship is combined with the biological function of procreation/reproduction, which is (normally and unfortunately) only possible with two people (in this context, a monogamous marriage) from different sexes (although marriage is not always the precondition for this function).
I believe that human beings are intelligent and always have alternative ways concerning this matter.
Kristian Oka Prasetyadi
Yogyakarta
