Brandus,
I want you to have your marriage. But I am against a defintion of marriage as being between two people, actually. I believe that polyamory is the way to go.
And if gays get their thing going, all the better, because a man or woman should be able to have more than one spouse.
And no, I’m not joking.
Go for civil unions, otherwise gays will fight for their unions to be recognized for at least 50 years. If not, it could go the way of the abortion debate, which overwhelmed all other repeoductive issues when it shouldn’t have.
Right, but even if a state were to allow gays to marry, instead of just set up “civil unions”, DOMA would mean that the Federal government still wouldn’t recognize, and other states wouldn’t have to either. So, until DOMA gets repealed, which isn’t going to happen any time soon, foreign state recognition isn’t even an issue.
And like Attrayant says, everybody’s going to call civil unions marriage anyway, because it’s easier. You’re not going to say, “This weekend we’re going to get civil unionized!”. If calling it a “civil union” will guarantee the same rights (on a state level, at least) a marriage would, without the emotional backlash of calling it “marriage”, go for it. Too many people have real lives at stake to turn it down on semantic arguments.
IIRC, what my husband and I have is a “civil union.” The ceremony was performed by a judge, in a courtroom. But I refer to myself as “married” (well, soon to be divorced, but that’s beside the point). No one questions it. No one says to me “uh, no, you’re actually ‘civilly unioned,’ not really ‘married,’ y’know?”
But for the last eight years, he’s been my next-of-kin. I put him and his son from a previous unmarried relationship on my health & life insurance. And when we divorce, there’s stuff he’s entitled to, because said stuff was acquired after we “married,” and is thus considered a “marital asset.”
IMHO, it just isn’t fair, at all, that gay couples can’t have what I have, and discriminating against them by not allowing them to marry or civilly union is just wrong, wrong, wrong.
Like the others have said, call it Shirley if you want, just let them do it. Yeesh! On the list of Things To Worry About While Living On This Planet, the gender of the two people in the church/courtroom/gazebo next to you shouldn’t even rate.
Well, it seems there’s a fairly clear concensus here; civil unions with the same rights as marriage seems to be acceptable, as an end in itself to improve people’s lives now, and perhaps as a stepping stone towards complete equality.
Let’s change it up, now. Someone mentioned that the Vermont civil unions law does not grant the same rights before the federal government as marriage does. Let’s tackle that.
Should gay rights supporters support civil union legislation that would not grant the same rights as marriage? Would it matter what rights were withheld? If so, which withheld rights should be dealbreakers, things that would make you want to take your chances with future bills rather than make some gains now?
Since everyone pretty much already took my points re: the first question posed, I’ll tackle your second, Windwalker
To be quite frank, every right of marriage is a necessary right in my opinion. I can only feel pragmatic up to a certain point, and rights being yanked is about the line I draw. Until they can successfully show my union with another human being is somehow less worthy of the full complements given by the government to straight couples then they have no reason to make my status inferior.
The only allegation which truly sticks is that I don’t reproduce. In the “traditional” sense of the word, this is undeniable even if it ignores adoptions and insemination. To this I say “Fine, whatever, but you better apply that across the line and start applying it to folks gettin’ hitched who are sterile because obviously they don’t need those rights any more than I do.”
Child molester? Not factually backed-up. Bad influence on children? Ditto. Promiscuous sex fiend? Not as of yet, sadly, but I’ll let you know when it happens. Mentally unsound? Long dead (thanks, Dr. Hooker!). The list goes on, but the list is full of lies and unsound assertions based on beliefs and crock-science.
So until you can demonstrate a tangible, factual reason why I shouldn’t have the same rights as a sterile heterosexual in marriage (or union or Shirley), you can stuff it so deep into your nether regions that a highly-skilled proctologist/spelunker will be required to extract it after days of painful probing without lube.
(P.S: “You” was abstract, not Windwalker)
Absolutely not. Gay couples should be granted all of the same rights as straight couples, period. And IMHO, they should be allowed to call it “marriage,” too.
I guess I just cannot get my head around the difference between a committed gay couple and a committed straight couple. Love is love. The gender of the person you love shouldn’t make one bit of difference. Gay couples aren’t trying to “destroy the sanctity” of marriage. They are trying to strengthen it. They don’t want anything different. They just want the same thing that the rest of us have.
I cannot see how that is wrong, in any way.
The problem is, it’s impossible, under existing federal law, for federal rights of marriage to be given to gay couples, whether the state grants marriage to a gay couple, or civil unions.
I realize this is a very emotional topic, but I didn’t really want to discuss the correctness of legalizing gay marriage in this thread, but rather what the best way of advancing the movement is. I agree with your ideal, but the question I was posing was whether gay rights supporters should support a civil union bill that does not give all the same rights as marriage, when the alternative would be no gay civil union (or marriage) bill. This assumes for the sake of argument that a limited gay civil union bill would be the only thing that would draw any support whatsoever in the national legislature; I don’t think this is too grand of an assumption in the current American political climate (in fact, it’s probably optimistic that even a limited bill gets serious consideration).
So, again, should gay rights supporters get behind a limited gay civil unions bill, if anything more would have virtually no hope of passing at the moment? Or should we hold support until legislation comes up that grants 100% equal rights as marriage, knowing that this legislation may take 1, 5, 10 years before it gains serious support in Congress? For those who would support a more limited bill over the alternative (no bill at all), what would be the conditions of support (i.e. what would make you withdraw support?)?
I think one of the main points to consider is whether accepting limited rights now would make getting full rights later more difficult, or more easy? Would a limited bill be a stepping stone to full equality, or an appeasement that may lead to complacency and undermine the drive to gain full rights?
Couldn’t they pass legislation to change this? Something along the lines of “The following federal rights granted to married couples will also apply to all civil unions as well.” This will allow them to grant partial or full marriage rights, as they see fit, no?
I don’t know much about the finer points of law, so please let me know how the question should be altered to make the premise of the discussion closer to life.
Well, yes, they could. The only problem is that, it’s not likely that they will. In 1996, Congress pretty overwhelmingly passed, and Clinton signed the “Defense of Marriage Act”, saying that, for federal purposes, marriage is between a man and a woman, and that neither the federal government or any state has to recognize or give any benefits to a marriage that isn’t between a man or a woman.
So, lets say Vermont says, “Ok, from now on, no more civil unions. Gays can get married, just like straights.”, and a gay couple gets married in Vermont. They still wouldn’t have the federal benefits that are given to a straight married couple, and if they were to move to another state, the other state wouldn’t have to recognize their marriage.
So, the problem isn’t that some states grant civil union rather than marriage…that’s a semantics problem. The problem is that the federal government isn’t willing to grant legal recognition to gay couples, by whatever name that legal status is called.
Although gay “civil unions” could theoretically be treated as equivalent to marriage under the law, having a distinct, “separate but equal” status will establish a loophole whereby society may continue to discriminate against these unions. What is to prevent an insurance company, for example, from extending benefits to “married” partners and their children, while specifically excluding those of civil unions?
I think “civil unions” are certainly a step in the right direction, but a very compromising one. With things like DOMA and current talk of a constitutional amendment (…I thought the constitution was supposed to uphold the rights of the people, not take them away?..), it is clear that civil unions would never be allowed to attain the full legal status of marriage in most states. The same people now claiming they have a problem with “gay marriage” are certain to have a similar reaction once the state tries to establish new “special rights” for gay people by giving its imprimatur to civil unions.
OK, thanks for clarifying. I still think it’s useful to discuss this issue, since even though federal rights granted to gay civil unions may not be likely now, it may be in the near future. And I think it will probably start with a bill producing partial support (i.e. partial granting of rights) for gay civil unions, and not with full equality. Since one can never be sure on what the timetable will be to full equality, I wonder what the best course of action would be in the face of a partial rights bill, considering that full rights may not have a chance of being passed until years after that…
MaceMan: Although gay “civil unions” could theoretically be treated as equivalent to marriage under the law, having a distinct, “separate but equal” status will establish a loophole whereby society may continue to discriminate against these unions.
Which is why I’ve often thought that a possible way for heterosexual couples to help out the good cause would be to demand a civil union instead of getting married. If somebody tells you you’re not allowed to do that because civil unions are only for gays, sue on grounds of discrimination. If some hetero couples are officially “married” while others are officially “civil-united” and nobody can really tell the difference, this will further blur the distinction between marriage and civil unions, and hasten the happy day when everyone throws up their hands and says “hell with it, it’s all the same thing”.
Personally, I would love to stir up this kind of trouble, and if any guy ever wants to marry me I promise I’ll take a crack at it. (Er, any guy that I want to marry, that is.)
Just out of curiosity, because I’ve never been able to figure it out, is there a legal difference between a civil union and a marriage? As I said earlier, my husband and I were joined by a judge, in a courtroom. But the rights we have are precisely the same as they were when I married my first husband in a big church wedding.
But you realize that about 150 years ago, people were saying they would NEVER consider black people real citizens, regardless of what the law said.
(I hate to keep comparing this to the struggle of African-Americans for equality, but to me, there are great similarites.)
After a law has been in effect for a while, there’s a sort of “normalization.” Perhaps it won’t be this generation, and maybe not the next, but if gay marriage is legalized, it will become the “norm” for most people, excepting those who have religious objections.
Our great-grandchildren may read this thread and shake their heads in wonderment that this was such a big debate.
And there still are some people like that.
Let’s hope it’s our children who get to do that.
Persephone, the problem is that that which hapened between you and your hubby IS called a civil marriage, and recognized as such. Take a look at the document, it probably does say the words “marriage license”.
“Civil Union” in the recent sense is often associated with an extension of the different, earlier-but-also-recent, concept of a “Domestic Partnership”, which (broadly simplifying) is two people (any gender) not “officially” married doing what was once called “shacking up”: setting up housekeeping and holding property and raising children (if any) jointly for as long as they feel like it, with nothing to prevent just up and leaving one fine morning; and it may accrue you certain rights and benefits from private employers and some local governments – it’s only out of those employers/governments Good Will, or of laws that protect children and transactions between any two adults, not as a matter of fundamental legal right deriving from the relationship itself. (Contrast the old-time “common law marriage”: no official ceremony, but legal rights were accrued by the facts of the relationship) “Civil Union” seeks to occupy a halfway point between that and marriage, providing legally binding rights without making it be “marriage”.
DOMA was passed in a fit of pandering hysterics over the possibility that the Hawai’i Supreme Court might “legalize” gay marriage and then the states and the Federal government would have to lend “full faith and credit” to such ceremonies (essentially, that the first state court to approve gay marriages would in effect legislate for the whole of the Nation). I’ll leave it for the Board lawyers to argue whether this was really such a threat or if FF&C is really that absolute or there could have been wiggle room. The Dems (including my otherwise well-liked Prez Bill C.) rationalized their support for DOMA by telling themselves that at least this way they braked a possible Constitutional Amendment (much easier to repeal a bad piece of Statute than a bad piece of Constitution).
Problem is that right now, if DOMA were challenged and SCotUS slapped it down, a Constitutional Amendment does have fair chances of passing.
And thus you have two painful risk scenarios, which are the basis for the OP:
(a) Do you demand “all or nothing, now!” and risk the answer be a rotund “nothing, then!”
(b) Do you accept to get what you can right now, and risk to lose all momentum, to legitimize a certain level of discrimination as good and moral, and be stuck in “separate but equal” (meaning unequal) purgatory for 60+ years, like the last time that kind of policy was officialized.
Yes, yes, that was my point. In fact, earlier, I said this:
**I just can’t understand the need to get a sort of semantical validation from the people most actively opposed to gay marriage. That just ain’t coming, not right now.
I say, take the “civil union,” so long as it it legally identical to marriage, and let time shape social convention until that time when most reasonable people just shake their heads over the idea that this was once prohibited, until that time when most people chuckle at calling this anything other than marriage, since that will be exactly what it is regardless of what anyone calls it.
IMO, The argument against gay marriage, beyond religious objections, has always focused on the slippery slope scenario. Marriage (in Western culture) has always been considered a commitment between 1 man and 1 women. Anything beyond that is abnormal to the concept of marriage. To expand the definition opens up any and all possibilities.
Since this ultimately involves sexual desire, logic would dictate that all sexual attractions be validated legally through matrimony. To say that “gay” marriage should be allowed but not something like polygamy would ignore other sexual preferences and unions. How do you expand the definition of marriage to only include 1 additional group? Thus the slippery slope objection to gay marriage.