# Gay marriage opponents, listen up: I've got a secret to tell you **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [November 6, 2008, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gay-marriage-opponents-listen-up-ive-got-a-secret-to-tell-you/471496 "2008-11-06T19:08:06Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 555
**Author:** ![Heffalump\_and\_Roo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heffalump_and_roo/32/7691_2.png) [@Heffalump\_and\_Roo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Heffalump_and_Roo)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2008, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gay-marriage-opponents-listen-up-ive-got-a-secret-to-tell-you/471496/555 "2008-11-19T18:13:19Z")
> [@Revenant\_Threshold](#): > > Just as a side note; I, personally, don’t really mind whether it is called “marriage” in law. The government’s calling of it that, for its own sake, is of pretty much no interest to me - I don’t care what the government calls it. What I care about is fairness; my preferred system would be simply to have the government use civil unions (or whatever name) across the board, and allow people then to call it whatever they want. But while OSM is on the books as marriage, it considerably hurts matters if OSM isn’t. Oh no! Then you agree with **magellan01** too. How disappointing. If you don’t care what people call it, as long as everyone has the same legal benefits, then you also fit under category 2 and also agree with **magellan01**. In order to remedy your “concern” regarding the two institutions being treated exactly alike, this is one comment that **magellan01** made in another thread. This one is not exactly on point as some other comment he made that I couldn’t find off-hand. But here’s one: > [@"Marriage is between a man and a woman. Period."](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marriage-is-between-a-man-and-a-woman-period/463188/151): > > This analogy doesn’t hold up. Separate but equal didn’t work because you had to duplicate a complete system for education, etc., that was as good in every way as the existing ones for whites. In the case of equal rights for gays all you need would be a few specific laws. Just for an example. Allow gays to enter into a legal union called X. Than have all the rights of married couples extend to a gay couple. Seems very simple to me. Extremely simple. I don’t suspect he meant that it would be simple to accomplish in actuality but that the concept is simple to imagine. He’s also made other comments to suggest that there could be a law that ties the institution of marriage and civil union together so that the benefits are exactly equal and one cannot be changed without the other changing. I don’t want to speak for him, but he can correct me if I’m misinterpreting him. So obviously, it won’t be you who will be telling me the counterarguments against him since you agree with him. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gay-marriage-opponents-listen-up-ive-got-a-secret-to-tell-you/471496)._