Let’s see, two groups, men and women, are subject to the same traffic laws. Is that odious because two groups are being treated as separate but equal? Therefore, “not really equal”?
Similarly, having two groups, SS couples joined in Civil Unions and OS couples joined in Marriage, is a simple and workable solution. All it requires is that the two groups have access to identical privileges and benefits. As long as they are, you’re not in a “separate but equal” situation. The fact that this still comes up is astounding. It shows a profound misunderstanding of what the term means, the history around it, and why it was such a bad thing.
That’s possible. But isn’t a simpler explanation also possible: It’s a way of saying, “not really the same as”? Which they are not. The same way that a woman is “not really the same as” a man. “Different than” is not the same as “inferior to”. We have men and women and somehow we manage to both enjoy identical driving privileges and have them subject to identical restrictions.
If they are subject to the same laws, that’s not “separate”, is it? The whole point of civil unions is that they are different in law to marriage. The appropriate analogy would be if there were separate traffic codes for men and for women, because women are “inherently inferior drivers” or something like that.
Why are there laws giving an incentive for people to pair up in marriage, even if those people do not plan to raise a family. Why are people who choose to remain single treated differently?
FWIW, the government’s involvement in marriage/civil unions is probably a different discussion. Essentially, it just boils down to a contract between two people. This is why those in favor of marriage equality are fighting the good fight: inasmuch as the government is concerned, it shouldn’t matter whether those two people are opposite-gender or not. A contract should be a contract.
For my part, “marriage” in a church environment is a different animal, as that seems to be the arena for “we pledge ourselves to each other under God, yada yada.” If a church wants to ban homosexuality from its walls, then (while I disagree with the practice) that’s their right. The believers aren’t forced to believe, and can take their patronage elsewhere if they disagree with doctrine. In much the same way, there are many churches (or simply ministers) who refuse to marry a couple before they have been through pre-marriage counseling. I had to do that in order for my former religion professor to perform the ceremony, and that was fine. I wanted him to do it, so I was okay with meeting his requirement; had I not been, I could have gone to any number of other sources. Of course, that didn’t prevent us from divorcing 3 years later, but that’s definitely a different discussion.
And if women’s were given a driving privilage card because men wanted to protect the word license, how would they react?
There is simply no good purpose accomplished by going to the time and expense of making the distinction between the word marriage and civil unions. Marriage as some sacred institution exists only in people’s minds, and nothing about SSM detracts from that in any way. All that is needed is an attitude change and letting go of old cultural indoctrinations. It may take another generation , perhaps two, but it’s the better way for humanity and society.
We actually have history of seperate but equal to look at. One group, traditionally looked on as inferior or less than, are given the facade of seperate but equal in an attempt to pretend bigotry is overcome in some practical way. It’s a sham.
Well, legal marriage and religious marriage are actually two separate things and regarded to be of differing worth depending on where you come from and what your family is like. When my uncle got married just by going to a courthouse my family was scandalized and never really accepted it. I also married my wife in a courthouse and while no one questions the legal legitimacy of our marriage, it’s just not regarded to be as real a marriage as the family members who got married in a church.
So we’ll always have a separate but equal thing going on some level.
There still is no rationale for creating separate terminologies for these. My atheist “religion” believes in marriage between same sexes and to deny my religion its rites is to deny all religion their rights.
Someone always brings that up, and it’s a pretty silly idea, really. We’ve been calling it “marriage” pretty much forever, and you’re only going to find a tiny minority that is interested in changing that. It’s a complete non-starter.
Those who don’t wan to “pollute” marriage by having it apply to same sex unions would go ape-shit ballistic if we decided to take the term “marriage” away from them in terms of what the government uses.
It’s not a compromise, it’s a Newspeak sort of charade that changes nothing.
As has been noted in several of these threads, previously, the concept of marriage that we practice in Europe and North America, today, stems much more from the Roman civil laws regarding marriage than from religious beliefs. Marriage is the most appropriate word.
If someone wishes to set aside a word for the religious phenomenon, they would be better off following the Catholic practice of calling it Matrimony. Thus, we could continue to use “marriage” in the way that is has always been used, simply expanding it to a slightly broader group, while indicating with “matrimony” the separate religious actions.
How many posters are actually opposing SSM on religious grounds?
I rarely see a “religious” argument in these threads.
There are any number of denominations who strongly support, weakly support, weakly oppose, or strongly oppose SSM, so any effort to use the rationale of one to “defeat” the rationale of another is going to fail on a simple, “We don’t believe that” declaration.
You could really just snip out the last three words and have the same question here. “How many posters are actually opposing SSM?”
There are those who are going by it in a semantic way (without giving their exact reasons), and my point still stands. There’s no confusion if I said Jack and Jill are married or if I said Jane and Jill are married. There’s no need to create a secondary lexicon for language easily understood by government and religious bodies. Now if I said Jack and Jill are civilly unioned, one would have to wonder what that meant. What are the legal and religious benefits on a local, personal, federal level? That’s why marriage for those of the same and opposite sex make sense to use the same word.
Then why don’t you actually look at it. The problem with SBE was that there were TWO different sets of schools. One for Blacks and one for Whites. That has zero to do with I and others have proposed. It’s a bumper sticker that makes you feel like you’re making some profound point but, in reality, just advertisers either your ignorance of SBE or detestation of logic. Perhaps both.
Two separate sets of statutes, one for marriage and one for civil union, even if they are initially identical, creates a major risk that they will deviate over time, as laws are passed amending or affecting only one set, for various motives, including but not limited to attempts to give more benefits to marriages than civil unions to as to ensure that they are the more favored and blessed-by-the-state type of coupling.
The benefit that justifies this risk appears to not exist. Unless, to your mind, it does. If so, what is the benefit of the separate statute approach?