Some concepts we have practiced within humanity have existed long before we understood their significance.

In our development, we began to create structure in order to effectively continue as a species. The cornerstones of this structure were the social interactions we developed, creating agreements that helped direct our actions within our communities to commit to other members in order for the whole to benefit. Our reasons for doing so range from necessity and survival to a god-given mandate, with many religions celebrating such behaivor through rituals that help strengthen the commitment each individual is taking in helping the other. We have come to refer to this concept as marriage, and have changed and molded it as needed in order to fit the world it existed in. The idea of marriage for some people may seem simple, depending on your upbringing, but it has never been such. Growing up within a Christian family, I was able to see both ways in which marriage presents itselfan agreement made before your country, and an agreement made before God. The Christian Bible refers to this idea within the very first book of the Bible, Genesis: (Genesis 2:22-24 KJV) And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. {23} And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. {24} Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. My parents later divorced, something that many families unfortunately go through in American society. Beginning with its inception, the United States of America has always stood as a beacon of freedom and liberty for all those that seek it; a collective agreement made by immigrants from all walks of life that symbolized the collective vision of those that created it. Its creation brought with it differing perspectives of institutions like marriage that had been established by previous governments across the world. Religious establishments made themselves heavily and tightly involved in its execution, acting as officiants that could recognize the pairings civic obligations and rights it was inheriting and legitimize its legality. Each culture respected its importance to our strength as a species, however. In our early days as country, as Nancy F. Cott explains, marriage and government were closely bound. Details of how this marriage were practiced widely varied, but the institution was agreed upon to be a civic responsibilitya contract agreed upon by two free people within a free nation that they could freely enter into and exit. We find ourselves today struggling with this previous understanding of how we ran this institution, and how we can adapt it to today's needs in order to continue our success as a society. Economic pressures push us to consider what changes might help us create more wealth within our society through political intervention; breakthroughs in civic rights are challenging us to fully interpret what the Constitution means when it dictates the classic phrase: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Our devotion to marriage has changed as we've interpreted what these rights mean to our society, and how highly we value our religious duty versus our civic duty. We have ranged from acting extremely violent and extremist towards those who broke its contractual obligation (in some cases, killing the accused as recently as the Bronze Age) to dismissing its contractual strength altogether in our current world. Massive shifts in policy and societal upheaval during the 1960's of America caused huge shifts in our interpretation of our divorce laws, causing a massive spike in divorce to occur. Adopting such laws relegated the contractual obligation of marriage to a transient state, and ease in its legal dissolvability became a priority moving into the 1980's, extending into its current form. We maintain, however, that during all of this, in a religious context, marriage is unchangeable and perfect in its definition given by God. It must be understood that in order to have a religious duty, we dually need a civic arena to allow such religious duties. Unlike current society, Revolutionary-era society did not see religion and law as opponents but as two sides of the same coin. James Wilson wrote, "Far from being rivals or enemies, religion and law are twin sisters, friends, and mutual assistants. Indeed, these two sciences run into each other. The divine law, as discovered by reason and the moral sense, forms and essential part of both. Practical reasons, such as reproduction created through a man and a woman, child-rearing, and communal interaction have long since underlined the importance of marriage. Our early understanding of this institution may have been influenced by these, and helped ground marriage's legitimacy with corresponding

scientific principals. It also directed how our government may have become involved in its enforcing. The societal benefits include decreased poverty, lower sexual activity and pregnancy outside of marriage, lower crime rates, and higher education attained more frequently. Legal benefits within structures like government have given people incentives to get married, such as securities, rights, and obligations that enable two people to properly care for each other and their family. Structuring of marriage in its early forms attempted to create airtight seals in preventing negative outcomes and promoting positive ones. Due to the ethereal nature the marriage contract has taken on by previous generations, we find the bottom has fallen out of the original intent of these institutions being completely reversed, as all of these initial ideals are stripped, removing even the practicality of marriage. As our current setup fails, we must reconsider how we can maintain a balance between our civic and religious interpretation of marriage so that it continues strongly into the future. All of legal rights which benefit a man and a woman engaging in this institution should directly apply to anysexed couples. As we've opened further rights for the individual in the history of the United States, we have seen massive steps societally in all aspects of who we aretaking serious the promise of our pursuit of happiness when given the chance to do so. How we take care of each other would begin to gain more focus, and further decline would stop as everyone found the support they needed from themselves, others, and the government that governs them. As every individual effects those around them directly or indirectly, these increased rights would immediately see positive changes. Rights help individuals support each other; taken together, they help society. If the basic purpose of marriage as it exists today within the United States is to strengthen both individuals as defined within our legal understanding of marriage, (economically, emotionally, mentally), it seems unwise to limit who these individuals are to one specific interpretation that is influenced through these previous religious definitions, directly dismissing the equality that we state we shall uphold within our founding documents. The idea of commitment that has been upheld by both civic and religious understanding is the cornerstone of the entire concept in the first place---importance so great that we have made it a binding document in both a secular and non-secular contexts. Allowing any who wish to pursue this type of binding commitment would directly correlate with the freedom we have created to enter into it and out of it, and would enforce this commitment. We must allow all (regardless of their characteristics) to be allowed to pursue to this path with the same protection to their freedom as any other person would receive in our country. By establishing the roots of the institution within this common bond we agreed upon in our nations creation, it would allow us to remove any stigma from the idea of marriage that may have been gathered throughout civilization's development and redefine it in a way that compromises with the civic and religious interpretation of marriage. Allowing for details like religious ritual, this new marriage could bring together new and old beliefs and traditions, and successfully bridge our previous understanding into a new, modern one.

Today, we allow other institutions like civic unions to exist to take the place of this official recognizition of these alternative pairings, While very similar in many ways, those engaged in civic unions do not receive the same rights that a man and woman marrying receive. This reasoning is based in older religious interpretations of how marriage must be defined. With this imbalance helping neither party under each institutions current application, we have to look at what is best for everyone in redefining its current relevance. Economic advantages would immediately be evident in that a whole new section of people would be allowed to be consumers of markets they were previous banned from. Other rights of individuals, such as to adopt, would be strengthened, with options for child-rearing gaining further legal defense for any who chose to take part in it. We would expand our society to include all those we stated we would care for upon Ellis Island, and move into a future of acceptance, sustainability, and further clarified understanding of what it means to be human.