Someone linked to an excellent article in The Atlantic which details the growth of an organization that decided to campaign for marriage equality, but do it in a structured and scientific way. Full article is here (and a great read).
The part that is reletive to this discussion:
OTOH, we might not be so close to full gay marriage if we hadn’t already had civil partnerships for a few years without the sky falling in. The rights are more important than the word, and if it takes temporarily giving up the word to get the rights, then I’d rather go with that. I mean, even just a few years of those rights means that hundreds or thousands of gay couples have been able to have their partners live with them in the uk, get surviving spouse’s benefits, be equal parents, etc. I wouldn’t sacrifice all that just for a word.
And it would be just as easy to redefine “marriages that include same-sex couples” as it would be to change civil partnership laws.
That said, I’m glad that it looks likely that my gf and I will be able to get married rather than civilly partnered, even though we’d have called it a marriage anyway and would do it in the same place and I bet we’ll still get asked which is the wife.
This is a fair point.
Exactly why it (SSM) will be legal in the future.
I think it’s more than that. If it’s not marriage, but “civil partnerships”, then it become just that much easier to reverse or separate benefits. If they’re “separate but equal”, then what’s to stop local legislators from passing laws that just benefit “married couples”? It must be same-sex marriage (not “civil partnerships” or whatever) to protect these couples from possible future government tyranny. It’s totally an individual freedom vs government question.
What’s to stop lawmakers making changes that only affect same-sex/opposite sex married couples?
What’s to stop lawmakers making changes that only affect black/white couples? Because marriage equal makes such laws illegal.
Does it, though? I’ve seen much more minor changes in my lifetime that affected only a certain sector of married people - I’m thinking of retirement ages and benefits. If lawmakers can make changes based on age, why not gender?
But in SciFiSam and Stink Fish Pot’s scenario, gays aren’t allowed to get “married”. They are allowed to get “unioned”. Mixed race couple are allowed to get married, so they can’t change the rules without affecting everybody. That’s not true with “unioning”. This is why it’s a trap. People, it hasn’t been that long - separate but equal doesn’t work. Christ, the Supreme Court is on record as saying that.
Sorry if someone has already said this, but I didn’t want to wade through pages of what seems to be an ongoing mini-debate.
My opinion is that it doesn’t matter what side of the issue a person is on, this change isn’t going to make the least little bit of difference in the (for lack of a better word), battle. The meaning and use of a word still can’t be mandated.
Those who don’t condone homosexuality still won’t recognize these unions as legitimate, still won’t apply the word “spouse” or “marriage” or “wife” to those unions, and those that do will still consider them legitimate, just with a “new” (new to them) word to describe it.
Homosexual couples already had access to privileges equal to those of a traditional marriage (couples healthcare at their companies, rights to estates, wills , etc) in the two states in which I’ve resided (WA and AK) anyway. Now, the only thing that has changed is that gay people can have a ceremony in which they can now legally call each other spouses.
Bottom line is, those that are against it are still not going to accept it. And those that are for will. So it’s still the same as it ever was.
Might be worth reading, CanvasShoes. Couple hundred years of legal documents, forms, and precedents already state “marriage”. No legitimate reason to justify the expense of drawing up special paperwork with the magic new term to pacify the old guard because it denigrates the union. You wouldn’t agree to labeling interracial marriages sonothing else, and there’s no reason to budge on this one, either.
No. You are totally incorrect. Same sex couples do not have the same rights as opposite sex couples anywhere in the US, particularly when it comes to estates.
I’m gay, I live in a country that does have “separate but equal” marriage laws, and it does seem to work. Civil partnerships have all the same rights as marriages (except getting married in a church - though you can have a ceremony there, of course, just not the legal part) and people have got so used to it that full gay marriage is going to become law soon. Stating ‘separate but equal doesn’t work’ repeatedly because a court said so is meaningless.
That’s great for you. Here in the US we tried it and it didn’t work. And even you admit that separate but equal in your country isn’t “equal”, there’s an exception. What’s to say they don’t decide to add other “excepts”?
This is more or less my point. Get “unioned”, or whatever you want to call it (except marriage) and before you know it, it will become part of the culture. People are lazy. They will start calling it what it is… A marriage. But if you focus on a word that gives the other side something to hang their argument on, they don’t have to think about any real reason to support their position.
“We shall overcome.”
I don’t see any “whites only” fountains or bathrooms. Maybe after 5 years of “unions” people will realize the sky hasn’t fallen, and the word “marriage” will be used to describe what a same-sex union really is. Either that, or you can wait another 20 years for principle.
Thing is, when civil partnerships were introduced they had a lot more differences to marriage, and over time they’ve been gradually whittled away until the only difference is signing a piece of paper in church. So it’s gone the other way to what you’re predicting.
The new gay marriage laws will still be different when it comes to churches; the name will be the same, though, which is apparently more important.
Where in the US have civil partnerships with equal rights been tried? If you’re actually talking about separate schools, etc, for black people, they never actually were equal, were they? So they’re not a good example of something that’s separate but equal.
Judging by precedent in American History, we are very bad at keeping seperate things “equal,” therefore we must go for the all-or-nothing approach of removing gender requirements for state-recognized and enforced marriage benefits.
When my sister’s first partner died, she got royally fucked, despite being the sole beneficiary of her will. Same sex marriage is needed for this reason alone.
That is one very good example. Federal estate tax law doesn’t recognize SSM marriages even if they are legal at the State level.
If your sister’s partner had been from another country and her visa had expired, she would have been subject to deportation even though she was married to your sister. That would not have been true, generally, if she were married to a man.
There are plenty of other examples but those are the worst ones.
40 years building a life together. Spouse died. $363,000 in federal estate taxes on her inheritance.
Totally the same as a hetero marriage.