I think most states do, now. I have this belief because a former coworker married his first cousin, in a state where that was legal, and subsequently moved to a state where it was NOT legal (I’m thinking Virginia?), and yet they remained legally married and actually had both their children in that state. But if you live in a state where you can’t be legally married and just go to a state for the purpose of getting married there, that doesn’t work–or maybe it does, now, but it didn’t at one time.
We as a society shouldn’t cater to wingnuts or take them seriously at all. If it were up to wingnuts blacks would still be riding in the back of the bus and drinking from separate water fountains. They’re wingnuts, they can’t help wanting to stop progress, but we don’t have to hold their hands and cooingly appease them. Anymore. Progress needs to happen in spite of them. They have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century, just as they had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the 20th century (several decades too late).
First off, I have to say, I never thought I’d see the day when a guy advocating gay rights would be called a bigot. The SDMB never ceases to surprise me.
Anyways, it seems that the pro-Gay marriage people lack the ability of strategic thinking. The nation is currently deadlocked over gay marriage. On the state-by-state level, there is unlikely to be majority support any time soon (which matters in the Senate). On the other hand, there is overwhelming support for gay civil unions.
So, in this climate, why resist civil unions? It’s not as if you can’t get marriage later. But, right now, take what you can get. It’s better than what you’ve got now. Everytime you insist on getting more, support dwindles.
It’s not like civil rights come in all-or-nothing form. Remember, African-Americans were first freed from slavery, then got Separate but equal, and only finally get true equality. You’d do good to follow that model, as it actually worked.
Of course, if you aren’t lacking strategic thinking skills, then argue with this instead of arguing that marriage != civil unions, as that is not really in contention.
Oh, and to answer the original question: the only reason that people I know are against gay marriage is that they think that marriage is a sacred word, more religious than legal. They are afraid that, if gay marriages are allowed, then they will eventually be required in religious forms as well. And if they support that happening, they fear the wrath of God.
As for me, well, I don’t care one way or the other.
And if they settle for civil unions, it will be much later than if they don’t. “Why do you want marriage ?! You have civil unions !”. Just like segregation, it will stall progress.
It worked when they finally figured out that segregation WASN’T a stepping stone to equality, just as civil unions aren’t; but a trap designed to keep them as second class citizens forever.
The lesson is to never compromise with bigots. It’s unjust, self destructive, and just doesn’t work. Go for full equality, relentlessly and without compromise.
In other words, bigoted lunatics.
Just a tangentially related question I’ve always had, and this from a purely curious standpoint (I am staunchly pro-SSM):
Is there some particular point of law that would make it impossible to cause “marriage” and “civil union” to be synonymous in the eyes of the law? I can conceive of this in a naive, grammatical sense, something like “In all cases where the word “marriage”, “married”, “spouse” or related terms appear in law or court precedent, the same law or precedent shall apply to a Civil Union”…
Or something like that. Is there some point of law that prevents such a construction? Again, I’m not arguing it should be so, but just wondering why a law couldn’t be written such that the two terms were made to be exactly synonymous legally.
Maybe we should quit endorsing marriage altogether. Why was there ever a reason for the state to recognize marriage between a man and a woman?
“Oh boy, we’re married now because we have a certificate from the state that says so. Now we can file taxes together and have both our names on the electric bill. Whee!”
What’s in it for the state?
Being a long-time proponent of same sex marriage I may not be qualified to post a response in this thread. But since I live in a part of the country where many people oppose same sex marriage, I’ll post reasons that I’ve heard, in order of frequency.
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Marriage is an institution that always involves one man and one woman. Granting marriage to any other set of people is therefore meaningless, kind of like giving death certificates to living people.
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Same-sex marriage is fine, but it’s wrong for judges to simply find a nonexistent right to it and override the democratic process. If allowed to stand, it could be used a precedent for further attacks on the democratic process.
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There are roughly equal numbers of men and women. Traditional marriage pairs of men and women, so almost every gets married. If same-sex marriage were normalized then the situation would grow imbalanced. (Because gay men outnumber gay women.) Hence there’d be a large pool of unmarried women, and the social status of women would drop.
I have a speculative reason, not supported by any evidence, for the large black turnout for Prop 8. It may be that black people are wary of politicians changing the marriage laws, because they remember that it was politicians who changed the laws in the early 20th century in order to ban interracial marriages.
I always get a bit of a kick out of the argument, “Hey it’s just a word, so what do you care?” pointed at the proponents of SSM. Of course they don’t see the contradictions, if they are de facto admitting it is just a word, then they are the ones who have to justify why it is important to them. Proponents of gay rigths NEVER argue that it is just a word. That is exactly what they are fighting against.
Sorry lissener, I know that I excused myself, but this is directed at me so I must respond.
The issue, at least for some who are posting here, is clearly Black and White, Good and Evil, With Us or Against Us. There is no room for nuanced opinions, no grey. If you are not for SSM, nay even if are not vigorously for SSM, then you are a bigot. The line is drawn.
Despite that, and at the risk of continuing being called a liar who is actually against SSM but just not brave enough to say so :rolleyes: or a bigot who does not know I am - because I can understand the POV of some of those who are for gay rights but not for calling it marriage - by polling data maybe 20% of the American electorate - I will attempt to try again.
Many Americans personally feel that abortion is not a choice that they would want to make for themselves. They have come to their own conclusion and made their own choice. Yet they feel strongly that they have no right to impose that choice on others. They are anti-abortion but pro-choice.
Likewise some Americans are uncomfortable saying that they approve of a gay lifestyle, perhaps from religious perspective, perhaps for some other reason. But they do not feel that it is their business what other people do and they feel that America should tolerate these different perspectives and that individuals with different perspective should enjoy the full protection of the law. Such a belief does not, I believe, constitute “bigotry”. To those people calling same sex partnerships “marriage” amounts to a societal endorsement, a societal seal of approval. They want to give the rights but they do not want to endorse, approve, or affirm what they still believe is somehow “wrong”. It would be like asking them to not just allow abortions but to promote and endorse them. If Pro-Choice advocates could only prevail by getting a majority to endorse abortion as a morally correct action (rather than a morally tolerated action) then we’d be stuck in the 50’s.
Do I disagree with their moral beliefs? Yes. (Feel free to accuse me of being untruthful again.) But I respect that they do want to do everything they can to assure same sex partnerships of as much equality under the law as possible short of doing that which they perceive as endorsing them - despite their moral beliefs - and I do not think you’ll get them to move any farther than that. Especially not by calling them bigots for it.
On preview: Gangster I also do not think it is “just a word” to either side. The word signifies approval. I don’t think you can get approval by calling the other side names.
I have to disagree here. I think the real problem is that proponents of SSM are trying to push too hard. The vast majority of people I’ve met who are opposed to SSM don’t have a problem with giving equal rights to gays, they have a special attachment to what the word marriage means and, like it or not, SSM does represent a redefinition of that word to a lot of people in a way that is scary to them.
The goal of SSM proponents to have legal rights completely identical to heterosexual couples is admirable, but I think the approach is overbearing and scaring people off. For example, it’s been over 140 years since the 14th amendment, it’s been 40 years since the civil rights movement, and yet it even someone as charismatic as Obama ran into a lot of race issues in his campaign, and probably wouldn’t have been electabled 8 or possibly even 4 years ago. Sure, there were also a lot of backward steps in the rights for minorities, but a lot of that is also a test to how slowly society changes.
Now, I don’t think racial equality is exactly analagous to homosexual equality, so there’s other things to consider. For instance, race is something you cannot avoid; I can have a conversation with someone who is gay and never know, but it’s much less likely with someone who is of a different race. Race issues have been in the American political eye for centuries where homosexual ones are much more recent. Hell, even in my short adult life, it’s gone from something almost completely unmentioned (I can’t recall anything about it in the 2000 election) to being an issue that cannot be avoided.
My point is, you can’t go from not equal to completely equal overnight. Passing laws doesn’t cause social change or acceptance of new paradigms. So pushing this “SSM or bust” sort of line seems to be causing more harm than good. Now, some states that were pretty against it, like my home Virginia, had a knee-jerk reaction and actually passed constitutional amendments banning it. Now if you want SSM in Virginia, instead of working on adding legislation, you actually have to go through the effort of revoking pre-existing legislation.
However, on your point that conceding to Civil Unions as similar to “seperate but equal” is something I hadn’t really considered until recently, and I understand the objection. The thing is, it’s a vicious cycle; as long as the SSM proponents keep trying to insist on using the word marriage, it’s going to cause this visceral reaction from the opponents and as long as the opponents insist on what is essentially a form of segregation, the more offended and persecuted the proponents will feel. The unfortunate situation here is that the verbage DOES matter, and it matters to both sides; if the word IS used, one side feels likes its a perversion and redefinition of something sacred to them, if it’s not used, the other side feels like they got some discriminatory or inferior version.
So here’s my question to the SSM proponents and opponents alike: What if a new term was created (and I would recommend against “civil union” just because it’s also now a loaded term) such that it applied to all forms of partnerships, not just traditional heterosexual couples and homosexual couples, but even potentially room mates or friends or whoever else might see some sort of legal advantage to the various laws that currently affect marriage. In essence, it would just be some form of specialized or standardized contract. How would you feel about that?
I realize this is sort of an idealized solution, but here’s how I see it (minus some of the hinky stuff like grandfathering current marriages and such). First, no baggage that goes along with the term, but at the same time, it doesn’t have to necessarily effect vernacular. People who are doing it for religious and/or romantic reasons can call themselves legally married; those who are doing it for other reasons can call it whatever they want. Second, because the word marriage isn’t used, those who hold religious objections can continue to do so. If you’re a member of a conservative sect of Christianity and believe homosexuality is wrong, you can continue to do so and not recognize their “marriage” from a religous standpoint. At the same time, if the religious aspect is important to a homosexual couple, chances are they belong to a church, or another religion, that has no issue and can make their marriage official in their own eyes.
As far as I see the government’s involvement, it’s really nothing more than a standardized and popular contract between two consenting adults, but has an enormous amount of tradition behind it. It’s been perverted now to the point where the original purpose is lost to time, and where some who are consenting and desire it, can’t get it because of tradition, and others get it because of tradition, but have no desire to enter it.
I understand your surprise. I, for one, never expected someone to hold up Jim Crow as a successful model for civil rights movements.
We already have civil unions in California. We won that fight. We’re now working on the next fight. The situation is, of course, different in other states. Should we stop struggling for equal rights in California until the gay rights movement has caught up in Alabama? Of course not. Every additional state that legalizes SSM makes it that much easier for other states to adopt more progressive gay rights legislation. Eventually, we’ll get to a point where enough states support SSM that we can force it on those that are still lagging behind. That’s going to take quite a while, of course, but it’s not going to come any sooner if we don’t fight for it. Progress doesn’t happen by itself. You have to push for it.
That absolutely is in contention. DSeid has been arguing this point in this very thread. Over in the pit, magellan01 has been using this as justification for his support of Prop 8. It is, in fact, a very common suggestion among the anti-marriage crowd that we should be satisfied by civil unions because they are, or could be, exactly the same as marriage.
And that’s manifestly untrue, and cannot be allowed to stand unchallenged.
And they fear this because they have been deliberatly lied to by the Proposition 8 campaign. I have to wonder, how much further ahead would the gay rights movement be if our opponents were honorable? If they were half as Christian as they claim to be, I suspect they’d have half as much support. An honest accounting of the stakes of this fight render support for Prop 8 very difficult to justify.
I’m amused at how the fact we’ve come so far in such a relatively short period of time is being used as evidence that pushing harder for equal rights is a bad idea.
You’re right there. It’s not the passage of laws that promotes social change. It’s the struggle for new laws that promotes change. The passage of a law is just evidence that we’ve won. Until then, we keep pushing for our rights. We keep the issue in the public conscious. We keep challenging the anti-marriage arguments, and making people think about their preconceptions. And it’s working: every time one of these issues goes to the ballot, it passes by a smaller and smaller margin. We know it’s not going to be an overnight victory, but you lot act like the fact that we can’t win instantly means we should just give up right now.
Can you point out how your proposal differs in even the slightest detail from the concept of civil unions? Because as near as I can tell, you haven’t actually suggested a single new thing in those two paragraphs. The objection to settling for civil unions is not, as odd as it may sound, simply an aesthetic objection to the phrase “civil union,” so offering up exactly the same thing under a different name is not going to get a different reaction from us.
And I’d agree with you. But that’s not who we’re talking about. We’re talking about these people:
Let me make this perfectly clear: If you are opposed to legalizing gay marriage, then you are not in favor of granting gays full equality under the law. You may support giving them some equality. Maybe even most equality. But you are not supporting full equality, because it is impossible to have full equality without having marriage rights.
Bully for you. I don’t give a shit one way or the other about their moral beliefs. I only care about their actions.
In other words, short of actually granting us equality.
Then we’re just going to have to wait until they fucking die. Considering the rate at which attitudes have been shifting in favor of gay rights in this country, they must be dropping like mayflies. Or, just maybe, our tactics are actually working, and more people are recognizing that being anti-SSM is, in fact, a form of bigotry, and are rejecting it. Either way, the most populous state in the Union failed to grant equal rights to gays by a mere 2% points. While legally it was a step backwards, in that we lost rights that we already had, a cursory glance at the demographics from the last 20 years shows that that’s the highest point of a swiftly up-trending curve in gay rights support, and there’s no reason to think it’s going to level off any time soon - nor is there any reason to think that changing our tactics at this point is going to speed things up.
It always amazes me that the bigots seem to operate in a vacuum - They act as if Same Sex Marriage doesn’t already exist in Canada, the Netherlands, Spain, South Africa, Belgium and soon Norway.
I’m happy for South Africans, but it’s really amazing that the country reviled around the world for apartheid is now more advanced than the country that is supposed to be a beacon of freedom. We can’t even enter the U.S as a family…
When my husband (of 21 years…) and I fly home to California and are going through U.S. customs, we have to go through customs and immigration separately. Yet Joe and Suzy who met in a bar last week, got drunk and married in Niagara Falls yesterday are welcomed with open arms as a family…
I just got a new job in L.A. starting in January - and to get benefits as a married person, I was told I just needed to show my marriage license. But now that Prop 8 passed, I have to go with my “partner” to a notary with a copy of a lease or mortgage, joint bank account and a couple other papers I need to dig up and sign a paper saying we’re a couple - along with paying a fee of course… (“Sorry, he’s no longer recognized as your husband, Daffyd”… If you had been starting before November 4th, you would have been fine…)
And when we finally get those benefits, I have to add almost $400 per month onto my income because the Federal Government doesn’t recognize my relationship and I’ll be taxed on it.
Gays and Lesbians in the U.S. have seen that we can be truly equal - and we shouldn’t have to put up with being second class citizens just because it makes some people “uncomfortable” to have Gays and Lesbians getting married.
As long as the word is different, we’ll never be equal.
The proper term for a civil union identical to religious marriage in the eyes of the law but distinguishable from it as being purely civil and not religious in nature is civil marriage. That battle was fought in the 1800s. Anyone who claims to favor equality but is unwilling to grant the use of the term is being dishonest, if not with others then with him/herself.
Here is the cite for the list of differences between CA domestic partnerships and marriages (warning PDF): In re: Marriage Cases. Look at footnote 24 starting on page 42.
Only if that was the only civil union supported by our government. In other words, if both same-and-opposite-sex unions were this, and marriage was something left to churches alone to give or not as they saw fit, I for one would be perfectly content.
Until then, no. Separate but equal does not work and you’d think we’d have learned that by now.
This is an extremely complex question when it comes to marriage (and divorce), and it’s a bit beyond my expertise. But when a change to marriage comes out, it’s not like it’s broadcast to every other state. What happens usually is that two people who were married in one state end up having to deal with the government of a second state (either an administrative agency or a court in a proceeding) in their capacity as a married couple. At that point, the second state has to decide whether or not it is going to recognize the first state’s rules governing marriage.
For certain routine things, the second state is will likely just automatically recognize the first state’s rules. For other non-routine things (such as a lawsuit or SSM), the state will have to make a decision the first time it comes up.
Under the Full Faith & Credit Clause of the US Constitutions, states are generally required to recognize the legal actions and proceedings of other states. But there are a lot of exceptions to this that have been carved out by the courts, and generally, states may (and will) refuse to recognize actions of another state that violate their own deeply held public policies or values. Typically, SSM is thought to be one of those things that falls under the exception, and we have a Federal law (DOMA) that specifically says that SSM is exempted. If a state legalized brother-sister marriage, that would also probably fall under the exception.