Esprix, your question regarding civil rights and the status quo was answered by me some time ago.
Now, at the risk of flying spittle, a question for Spectrum.
I have proposed civil unions for gay couples and other couples that need to live in a household, but are not, for whatever reason, in a sexual or romantic relationship. You don’t find this solution satisfactory.
What, then, is to become of those other people? There are lots of people who are unable to have or uninterested in a romantic relationship at certain times in their lives. Many of these people, though, have a legitimate need to establish a household with another adult. You’re leaving them completely out of any household building arrangement at all.
We have, therefore, the ironic situation where my proposal is more fair and inclusive than yours. Yet I’m the one being called a bigot.
I think you should justify why you’re discriminating against people who don’t happen to be in sexual relationships. Especially when the crux of the argument, for years, from the gay community for such unions was the changing nature of the American family and American households.
Erm, why are you lumping gay people with genuine relationships in with people cohabiting for convenience? Can you even demonstrate a need for such a contract? At the moment I’m living with four friends, and it works fine with no apparent need for me to enter a civil union with them. Should more formal arrangements be required I don’t see why normal contractual processes wouldn’t suffice.
Surely you can see the objection to your proposal? You’re having one thing for heterosexual couples, and a separate one for gay people and people who just want to cohabit. It comes across fairly unequivocally as creating a second-class institution for gays. If there really is a need for non-loving cohabiting people to have some state-recognised contract then by all means create it; this, however, is no justification for denying gay people who do love each other the full shebang.
I’m curious, Lib: was this before or after your conversion to libertarianism? Would you still participate in the same sit-in today, given that what such a sit-in is essentially advocating is a restriction on the right of a businessowner to choose his clientele?
Well, Dead Badger, I could as easily say that contractual processes would be fine for gay people, too.
But we know that’s not going to cut it. That doesn’t go far enough.
I’m sure you are aware of the backlash the push for gay marriage is producing. It is a sufficiently strong backlash that it puts even civil unions in peril. Look at what’s going on right now in Virginia if you doubt this.
I know civil unions are a compromise that leaves both sides uneasy. But that’s the nature of political compromise. I also do not see why people with a genuine need to establish a household must be kept out of a civil union merely because they don’t have a sexual relationship. That seems unnecessarily confining.
Charles Krauthammer, who is a very conservative commentator, views civil unions as a way for America to gradually move toward full gay marriage, without backlash. I am in sympathy with this viewpoint.
It is in any case irrelevant to the churches, as they will still be free to set their own rules as to what marriages they will sanctify. This is as it should be.
“Why, Reverend King! How nice to meet you! Here’s our compromise offer…we’ll let your people vote for any public office of lesser authority than county commissioner. Isn’t that fair?”
Because it demeans the dignity of gay relationships, saying that they are no more meaningful than the relationship between two friends.
No, I’m leaving them out of any marital-type institution, because marriage (or gay civil unions, by any other name) is more than a mere set of legal nicities, but is in fact a unification of two people in a (presumably) romantic relationship into one entity.
What would I have them do? Well, if they’re both the same sex, they could get a gay civil union, if they’re willing to present themselves as a romantic couple to the world. If they’re heterosexual, the “show” marriage has a long and varied history. It would be an abuse of the system I would like to see put in place, but an abuse that at least does not demean gay or straight romantic relationships by equating them with mere friendships, as yours does.
Your proposal demeans my relationship. It says “spectrum’s relationship, though it has every appearance of being a loving, potentially lifelong romantic involvement, is in truth no more meaningful than that of those two friends over there who just happen to be roommates. It is certainly not as meaningful as a straight marriage, which implies something societal and (for some) religious about the pairing of two heterosexuals. Because spectrum is a fag, and their relationships just don’t mean much.”
Don’t tell me what the crux of my argument is, asswipe.
And there you go again, demeaning gay relationships. You really hate gay people. It’s sickening.
Repugnant filth regions of this country which have always been culturally backwards and fundamentally evil will always be the last to embrace equality and goodness.
You’re seeking to debase all meaning out of gay relationships.
**WHY DO YOU INSIST THAT MY RELATIONSHIP WITH THE MAN I LOVE IS NO MORE IMPORTANT THAN MY RELATIONSHIP WITH BEST FRIEND?
WHY DO YOU INSIST THAT A STRAIGHT MARRIED RELATIONSHIP IS MORE DESERVING OF PRIVILEGE AND ACCLAIM THAN MY RELATIONSHIP?**
Oh, well, if some jackass conservative commentator agrees with you then I guess you must be right. :rolleyes:
Your relationship with the man you love is much more important than your relationship with your best friend.
And I don’t think a straight married relationship is necessarily more deserving of acclaim or privilege than your relationship. Indeed, the measures I favor would serve to strengthen long term gay relationships, and that’s a good thing.
Now that I’ve gotten these little sticking points out of the way, here’s my argument, if you’re open minded enough to hear it.
America has come a long way, in just a generation, on gay issues. Just a decade or so ago, civil unions weren’t even on the political table. Gay marriage was a joke. Any politician that advocated these things would have been unelectable.
I believe civil unions can be a political reality, right now, across the nation, because they can be presented as a political compromise. Gay marriage cannot pass in America right now. It can be attempted, but it will fail. It will create a backlash similar to what is being seen in Virginia right now, that puts even civil unions at risk.
Even if, by some miracle the Supreme Court were to impose gay marriage by fiat across the nation, and it were to be uncorrected by constitutional amendment, the culture war that would be created would make the abortion controversy of the last thirty years look like a high-school debate match by comparison. Some of the same nutjobs that bomb abortion clinics wouldn’t hesitate to bomb churches that wed gays, for example.
Lastly, there exist many people, like I said, that are in long term living arrangements in a household but are not sexually involved. My best friend, for instance, grew up in a household with his mother and an aunt. All of the arguments presented in the gay marriage debate about property transfers, health benefits, powers of attorney, hospital visitation rights, and the like apply to them as well. I believe it would be fundamentally unfair to cut them out of a civil union benefit simply because they’re not sexually involved.
If the civil union is instituted to strengthen American families, I believe it should not be limited to those families where people are fucking each other.
I also think you are missing a pretty important point. I am a diehard conservative, and so is Charles Krauthammer. Yet we both see gay marriage as a reality in America’s future.
Once we get past the mindless namecalling, that is.
Yet you fucking demean it by attempting to legally equate the two. You spit on my relationship, piss all over our love and deride it as no more important than that of two pals who split rent with your proposed bullshit “unions.” Your desire to have my relationship rendered little more important than that between two roommates belies your hollow, meaningless statement here.
No, they wouldn’t. They would cheapen long term gay relationships by equating them with mere friendships in the eyes of the law. Companies would use your broad civil union as justification for not extending benefits to gay partners since just any two dumbfucks could walk into a court and get “unioned.” A gay civil union system which is the equivalent of gay marriage under a different name would give gays the social standing to demand equal treatment in terms of benefits from employers. Yours would ensure we never achieve that plateau.
Only if they’re real gay civil unions. I will fight to my dying breath to prevent your Buddy System Civil Unions from ever coming into reality. I will not have my relationship so demeaned.
Who says anything about right now? It’ll happen slowly, state by state, over the next generation, as Christianity continues to lose its deathgrip on the American soul and the not-so-greatest generation continues to ship their bigoted worldview off to the grave. The battle is already won, longterm. Generational displacement will make gay marriage inevitable.
There never were civil unions in the state of Virginia, and there weren’t going to be for a long time. All Virginia has done is raised the gay rights equivalent to the racist Confederate battleflag over their capitol. The state will either back down, or it will see a migration out of Virginia by gays and other actual human beings. Already nationwide boycotts of Virginia and companies based in Virginia are forming. I will participate in as many of those as I reasonably can.
Virginia is no different than any other evil Southern state which gleefully engages in evil bigoted actions. I suspect other Southern states will pass similar Jim Fag laws in coming years. It will have no affect on the larger issue, because on social matters no one in their right mind would take anything the South has to say as being of any value. Fifty years from now, America will look back on the South’s history with shame and disdain once more. As thinking Americans always have.
Your use of the term “uncorrected” is quite telling.
SCOTUS won’t impose gay marriage. At least, I hope it won’t. Within ten years, gay marriage or civil unions will have spread to a few more coastal states. Within twenty, into the rust belt. It’ll spread across the nation slowly but inexorably. Eventually, we’ll have a series of disconnected but similar gay marriage or civil union-style systems in the majority of states, at which time SCOTUS may become involved in linking all those systems together or imposing Federal recognition.
This isn’t a short term argument, but a long term battle. And one that really can’t be lost. The younger generations are on board in heavy numbers. Unless a cure for death can be found, the current agents of evil can’t hold sway forever.
I’m sure. Christian fanatics and other gay haters will go to any lengths to kill us or ruin our lives today. That will never change.
Whoop-dee-doo. Their relationship is not as meaningful and as needful of cultural and governmental recognition as a gay romantic relationship. Including them cheapens gay relationships. If they want the same rights, then they can pretend to be in love and get married or civil unioned, depending on their gender. But to open the doors so wide that anyone can be unionizied is to so cheapen the institution that it is no longer a cultural elevation of gay families to a near marital level, but a derision of gay families as being no more meaningful than a couple of friends who live together.
And I think it’s evil for you to piss on my relationship and say it’s legally no more meaningful than two sisters shacking up for cheaper rent.
Sex has nothing to do with this. This has entirely to do with the union of two romantically involved persons into one legal entity, just as straight marriages do. The elevation ABOVE FRIENDSHIP or casual acquaintance of such relationships. You would continue to offer such elevation to straight couples, but not to me and my boyfriend. We remain second class, stuck as being no more important than a long term friendship. That’s hateful bullshit, and will be responded to in kind.
So a right wing fanatic (which in America means crypto-fascist since America is already so fucking right wing that it’s disgusting) hates my relationship and wants it legally declared as meaningful as that of two college buddies who hang out a lot. What a shock.
Children are not the point of marriage. We let infertile people marry. We let couples who don’t want kids marry. Kids are totally extraneous to what marriage is.
And in any case, it won’t be long before two persons of the same gender can combine their DNA into an emptied human egg and form an embryo that can be carried to term. Not that I would want kids. Dogs are good. Kids are annoying.
First, I object to the phrasing “impose gay marriage by fiat” and to the notion that protecting for same-sex couples the already established Constitutional right to marry would be something that requires “correction.” Second, that some people may commit evil acts to oppose social change does not serve as an excuse for denying social change.
Many of the examples you offer would already have been available to your friend’s mother and her sister. As legal next of kin, visitation, inheritance and other rights are already established. The relationship between legal spouses is recognized by society and the law as being of a different order than that between siblings or even parent and child. There is a reason why a spouse of one day is legally closer kin than a parent of 50 years. Now, if you wanted to abolish marriage in its entirety and replace it with some sort of reciprocal beneficiary scheme, that’s fine. Or legalize SSM and create a separate reciprocal beneficiary scheme for sisters or what have you. But to shoehorn a same-sex spousal relationship into the same mold as a couple of roommates or even a pair of sisters is wrong-headed.
