On October 7, 1998 a twenty-one year old, homosexual, student at the University of Wyoming was murder. Matthew Shepard was abducted and taken to an isolated area east of Laramie. Matt was tied to a fence where two men brutally beat him with the rear end of a pistol he was left there to die. 18 hours later a bicyclist, who initially mistook Matt for a scarecrow, found him. Days later Matt died at the hospital with his family by his side (MSF). In 1993, Sharon Bottoms lost custody of her two year old son, Tyler, because she is a lesbian. The court ruled that Sharons homosexual conduct was immoral and illegal and renders her an unfit parent (Katz). The murder of Matthew Shepard and the discrimination Sharon Bottom endured raised awareness to the attacks on gay people. Although some people believe that a gay lifestyle undermines traditional values, all people deserve equal rights and treatment regardless of their sexual orientation. .
In 2008, the unbelievable happened, after same sex marriage had already been legalized in California, Proposition 8 stripped away those rights with the same, overused arguments: protecting the institution of marriage, protecting society, and protecting the children (Kellard). While these and other arguments seem to hold up in court they are contradictable and unjustifiable. A common argument heard in non-support of homosexual marriage is that they must protect the children. This applies to many areas such as education and adoption. More than 100,000 children are sitting in foster homes waiting to be adopted in the United States right now. These children, on average, will be in foster care for three years; and, one third of them will still be in there for more than five years before being adopted (Klein). It is argued that homosexuals are incapable of being sufficient parents simply because they have different sexual interests. In these years of 1986-1992, 154 expecting lesbian mothers volunteered to be studied to examine the psychological adjustment of children in a same-sex household.
