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Essay on Gay Marriages
Same-sex marriage is marriage between two people who are of the same characteristic sex. Other terms include gay marriage, homosexual marriage, same-gender marriage, gender-neutral marriage, and equal marriage.Homosexuality has at times been used as a scapegoat by governments facing problems. Some examples would be Nazi Germany's treatment of homosexuality based on the understanding that it was a threat to masculinity as well as contaminating the Aryan Race. Another is the burning of 6,000 books of homoerotic poetry of 8th c. Persian-Arab poet Abu Nuwas by the Egyptian Ministry of Culture in January 2001, to placate Islamic fundamentalists. During the early 14th century, accusations of homosexual behaviour were instrumental in disbanding the Knights Templar by the French court under King Philip the Fair.
As recently as the 1950s, Democrats in the United States Senate tried to discredit Senator McCarthy and his attacks on Communist sympathizers by accusing one of his aides of being a homosexual. Gay marriage supporters argue infertile couples and couples who use birth control methods to prevent conception are allowed to marry. As far as infertile couples are concerned, that is something beyond their control. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, opposing efforts to legalize and ban same-sex marriage made it a topic of debate all over the world. At present, same-sex marriages are legally performed and recognized in the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, and Canada, and the U.S. state of Massachusetts. On 1 December, 2005, South Africa's Constitutional Court extended marriage to include same-sex couples which will go into effect by December 2006.
Civil unions, domestic partnerships, and other legal recognitions of same-sex couples, which offer varying amounts of benefits that are attached to marriage, are available in: Argentina, Brazil, Croatia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Israel, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the Australian Capital Territory and the states of New South Wales, Queensland, Tasmania, and Western Australia......
