Politicians all over the country are attempting to ban gay marriage, but UA students say it's time to give homosexuals the same rights everyone else has.

Lettie Hobbins and Victoria Gibbins said the issue of marriage is not one for the state to meddle with.

Hobbins, a criminal justice junior, said it is not the state's role to set morals, and that a marriage between gay people should be acknowledged like any other marriage.

"It's not the state's business to infringe on peoples' personal relationships," said Gibbins, a business administration sophomore.

Scott Westle, a political science senior, said he fully supports gay marriage.

"I think it's about time," Westle said. "There's no reason gay couples can't get the same rights as heterosexual couples."

Jonna Lopez, director of ASUA Pride Alliance, said she and her partner are ready to get married, but Arizona won't allow it.

"It's a set of rights and responsibilities that we can't get," Lopez said. "Heterosexual couples are given access to this institution that homosexual couples are not."

Gay marriage will take center stage on campus today as Pride Alliance hosts the Freedom to Marry Ceremony on the UA Mall. The ceremony kicks off weeklong events to promote gay awareness.

While Lopez is trying to encourage support for the right for gays to marry, lawmakers around the country are trying to codify marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

In his State of the Union address last month, Bush talked about the possibility of using the "constitutional process" to protect the sanctity of marriage.

The Federal Marriage Amendment, which would make same-sex marriages illegal under federal law, is gaining momentum in Congress.

The Arizona Legislature is also getting involved. The Senate Family Services Committee voted 4-3 to introduce a memorial titled "Marriage; One Man; One Woman."

Sen. Mark Anderson, R-Mesa, one of the memorial's sponsors, said the memorial's purpose is to tell Congress that Arizona supports and would ratify a constitutional amendment.

"For me, it's the definition of marriage. Other forms of relationship are not marriage," Anderson said.

Michelle Malloy, an undeclared freshman, agrees.

"I am against it (gay marriage). It's not right," she said, but added civil unions are acceptable.

Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual activists, on the other hand, say they believe the government is overstepping its bounds.

"If a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage passes, I'm moving to Canada," Lopez said.

Fenton Johnson, an associate professor of creative writing, said he thinks the state should not be involved with marriage at all, for homosexuals or heterosexuals.

Johnson said the state has no role in marriage, and those who wish to be married can have the ceremony performed by a church.

"I am reluctantly supportive to have the state certify same-gender marriage," he said. "The state does not make a marriage."

He added that by defining marriage as only between a male and a female, the state is discriminating against same-sex couples, not allowing them to be eligible for benefits.

"Because the state has gotten involved in the realm of marriage, it comes with the whole raft of benefits," Johnson said. "Separate but equal has never worked. Same-gender couples are going to be discriminated against."

Lopez wants the state to at least offer civil unions to any couple who wants one. She said she is enthusiastic about what San Francisco started doing last week: issuing marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples.

"The mayor of San Francisco is going to go down in history as the Rosa Parks of the gay rights movement," Lopez said.

To protest locally, Lopez said a petition will be available at this evening's Freedom to Marry Ceremony reception. The signatures, affirming peoples' desire to have nondiscriminatory civil unions, will be sent to the Arizona Legislature.