By McKayla Heller

Last week, Donnie Smith bravely and eloquently opened the floor for a discussion that has not been taking place on as large of a scale as it should.

His piece entitled “Opposing Gay Marriage Denies Human Equality” was passionate, personal and thought-provoking. Although I am personally for gay marriage, I thought that it was necessary to lay out some groundwork for this discussion to continue in a civilized, orderly and progressive fashion.

I would like to propose that we must do several things to stop allowing this issue to be at an impasse — a state in which it very much remains today.

First, we must stop attacking other people’s religions. Certainly, we can examine and reexamine the texts, taking into account the time period they were set in, the purposes to which they served at that time and what we should make of them now. We can do that, but to get caught up in that is to stall a productive discussion on gay marriage.

Second, we must identify that marriage, although a term present in the church, is separate from a religious context because marriage is a status that the government gives its citizens.

Marriage within the church is different from marriage outside of the church. The two often accompany each other. When the government picks and chooses which two individuals have the ability to get married based on the individuals’ identity, that is a form of social control. The over 1,400 financial and legal benefits that marriage through the government gives couples concerns the wellbeing of many.

In addition, churches, as independent institutions, perform religious marriages. They have just as much of a right to refuse to perform marriages for gay couples as they do to refuse to perform marriages for straight couples.

Third, we must stop saying that the right to marry is a human right, because human rights are tricky to define. For example, do human rights revolve around the right to fight to survive or do they encompass something larger? Instead, let us call this an issue of fair and equal treatment under the law.

The gay rights debate is a civil rights debate. Laying out the groundwork is only the beginning. I hope that we will have many more enlightening thoughts and productive discussions to come.