Gay marriage is good for america by jonathan rauch

It provides domesticity and a safe harbor for sex. If you are a couple raising kids, marrying is likely to make them healthier, happier and wealthier, too. Overview "Thoughtful and convincingly argued Rauch's impressive book is as enthusiastic an encomium to marriage as anyone, gay or straight, could write." — David J.

Garrow, The Washington Post Book World In Maygay marriage became legal in Massachusetts, but it remains a divisive and contentious issue across America. What is this weird world like? Gay Marriage Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America Author: Jonathan Rauch Read Excerpt.

Marriage, remember, is not just a contract between two people. It is a world of fragile families living on the shadowy outskirts of the law; a world marked by heightened fear of loneliness or abandonment in crisis or old age; a world in some respects not even civilized, because marriage is the foundation of civilization.

Imagine coming of age into a whole community, a whole culture, without marriage and the bonds of mutuality and kinship that go with it. It stabilizes communities by formalizing responsibilities and creating kin networks.

Re-enter your childhood, but imagine your first crush, first kiss, first date and first sexual encounter, all bereft of any hope of marriage as a destination for your feelings. To understand why, imagine your life without marriage. I could go on and on.

Gay Marriage Why It

The first to be wed in San Francisco were Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, pioneering gay-rights activists who have been a couple for more than 50 years. History has turned a corner: Gay couples — including gay parents — live openly and for the most part comfortably in mainstream life.

It has more sex and less commitment than a world with marriage. They should choose to keep it. What I am asking you to imagine is life without even the possibility of marriage. And now add even more strangeness. Rauch grounds his argument in commonsense, mainstream values and confronting the social conservatives on their own turf.

Jonathan Rauch, one of our most original and incisive social commentators, has written a clear and honest manifesto explaining why gay marriage is important-even crucial-to the health of marriage in America today. And its absence can be calamitous, whether in inner cities or gay ghettos.

Marriage makes you, on average, healthier, happier and wealthier. This is a fantastically fruitful bargain. It is a contract that two people make, as a couple, with their community — which is why there is always a witness. In exchange, the community deems them a family, binding them to each other and to society with a host of legal and social ties.

Few heterosexuals can imagine living in such an upside-down world, where love separates you from marriage instead of connecting you with it. Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America is a book by the journalist Jonathan Rauch in which the author advocates the legal and social recognition of same-sex marriage.

Indenying gay Americans the opportunity to marry is not only inhumane, it is unsustainable. Re-enter your first serious relationship, but think about it knowing that marrying the person is out of the question. Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America Paperback – February 1, by Jonathan Rauch (Author) See all formats and editions.

Marriage is our first and best line of defense against financial, medical and emotional meltdown. This will not change, ever. Instead, they say same-sex couples can get the equivalent of a marriage by going to a lawyer and drawing up paperwork — as if heterosexual couples would settle for anything of the sort.

By order of its state Supreme Court, California began legally marrying same-sex couples this week.