"many same-sex couples want the right to legally marry because they are in love — many, in fact, have spent the last 10, 20 or 50 years with that person — and they want to honor their relationship in the greatest way our society has to offer, by making a public commitment to stand together in good times and bad, through all the joys and challenges family life brings." Journalist Gail Mathabane likens prohibitions on same-sex marriage to past prohibitions on interracial marriage in the United States. Author Fernando Espuelas argues that same-sex marriage should be allowed because it recognizes the civil right of a minority. Historian Nancy Cott rejects alternatives to same-sex marriage (such as civil unions), reasoning that "there really is no comparison, because there is nothing that is like marriage except marriage." Role of social media Supporters of same-sex marriage successfully utilized social media websites such as Facebook to help achieve their aims. Some have argued that the successful use of social media by LGBT rights organizations played a key role in the defeat of religion-based opposition. One of the largest scale uses of social media to mobilize support for same-sex marriage preceded and coincided with the arrival at the U.S. Supreme Court of high-profile legal cases for Proposition 8 and DOMA in March 2013. The "red equal sign" project started by the Human Rights Campaign was an electronic campaign primarily based on Facebook that encouraged users to change their profile images to a red equal sign to express support for same-sex marriage. At the time of the court hearings, an estimated 2.5 million Facebook users changed their profile images to a red equal sign. Opposition Opposition to same-sex marriage is based on claims such as the beliefs that homosexuality is unnatural and abnormal, that the recognition of same-sex unions will promote homosexuality in society, and that children are better off when raised by opposite-sex couples. While some researchers question the definitiveness of the evidence, others assert that science has shown that homosexuality is a natural and normal human sexuality, that sexual orientation cannot be chosen, and that the children of same-sex couples fare just as well or even better than the children of opposite-sex couples. Others argue that the word "marriage" has always had a very specific meaning, i.e. the union of a man and a woman. By this argument, calling same-sex unions "marriages" is not