Americans prefer to believe that the United States is the most progressive country in the world, yet five other countries have legalized same-sex marriage, while only two states have done so. We live in a country founded on the given right that all men are created equal, yet we dismiss this fundamental right when we see something that displeases us. It was just 41 years ago that the Supreme Court struck down laws banning interracial marriage. Today, we see that past as barbaric and unforgivable, yet we continue to limit rights on the basis on sexual orientation, just as we once denied them on the basis of skin color.
Some opponents of gay marriage claim that to be gay is unnatural, and that gay people will spread their homosexuality like a disease. They call this the gay agenda. I see a straight agenda, in which many straight people would like everyone to be straight like they are. We know that it is impossible to “make” someone straight—just it is ludicrous to believe that someone can be “made” gay. People seem to oppose the idea of “gayness,” rather than same-sex marriage. Gay people will not disappear, whether we deny them the right to marry or not. They will still exist, and their existence is not something we can annihilate with an amendment.