Robbnn, your questions would best be answered by a gay person who is in or contemplating a committed relationship, but let me give it a shot:
1. Lifelong commitment outside marriage: so can you. So why did you marry? As a matter of courtesy, I’ll assume it was not totally because you wanted sex and felt it was sinful outside marriage. When you’ve cited your reasons, ask yourself what difference there is between them and two gay people who love each other, other than the obvious oppositeness of gender in yours.
2. Sex and Commitment: Presume for a moment that God and the state don’t give a fig about fornication (as opposed to adultery) (very close to the truth today in most jurisdictions for people other than conservative theists of one form or another), and take the assumption that two people in love may want to commit to a monogamous relationship rather than a freedom-to-have-sex assortment of relationships. Again, no difference except choice of partner between gay and straight.
3. God’s opinion: I don’t have a clue what the various gay posters’ gods have laid down regarding sex, hetero-, homo- or otherwise, but my God doesn’t overlook a thing. He just doesn’t get his moral values from the National Enquirer or the 700 Club. And neither do I.
4. Kids? Many heterosexual couples do not have children, nor intend to. Despite the best-laid plans, my wife and I didn’t. For reasons that seemed good to us at the time, we didn’t look into adoption while we were still young enough to deal with small children. (And dealing with our close friends’ small children has proven to us that we’re too old to do it now!) Now, rather obviously, a gay couple is not going to engender children in the “normal” way, but either from pre-coming-out marriages (or other liaisons) or from adoption, there is a large proportion of gays who do in fact have children. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I know a lesbian couple who are doing a great job parenting two adoptive daughters.
Now, Eve’s list was supposed to summarize what gays are looking for in the real world, not the world of legal fictions or idealistic rose-colored imaginations. Unless a law prohibits an employer from dismissing a gay employee, a suitably homophobic employer (or manager – I know of one nationwide company whose president has a gay son but which has some homophobic local management) will dismiss an employee for being gay (or find a pretext). Yeah, Matthew Shepard had the “right not to be beaten.” Fat lot of good it did him!
I am disgusted by “slippery slope” arguments like “But then where does it stop? Do we allow incestous marriages? Group marriages?” Are you suggesting that those of us who believe that marriage is a sacramental contract before God should be opposed to atheists like David and his wife or Phil and his marrying, since they cannot in good conscience pledge to each other a covenant before a god in which they do not believe? We’re already on that “slippery slope.” Incestuous marriages? My aunt married her first cousin at age 70, and I could not be more happy for them for the year before he died. And it was a well-thought-out intentional relationship that I’d be more than happy to defend against anybody that cares to sniggle about it. Besides which, I’m not totally sure I like the whole implications of the argument at all. Outside the moral requirements of one’s faith, where do we get off determining what relationships are OK and what are not? If four people choose a group marriage and commit to each other, on what secular moral grounds (not religious and not legal) may we object?
Finally, although the whole argument is revolving around ethical questions, there are very real practical questions involved, and one of them touches home with me. A gay couple, absent a legal marriage or D.P., is unable to act as guardian one for the other, as would be needed in hospital intensive care units, to leave an estate not subject to challenge by “legal relatives” who may have disowned the gay person in question for being gay, etc. That is a very real and practical legal reason for not prohibiting some sort of union.
My own personal investment: As noted here and elsewhere, my wife and I are childless, and I have no siblings or even cousins. Her nephew, whom we have seen twice in six years, is her only living blood relative, and I have none closer than second cousins once removed and one surviving second cousin, all of whom we haven’t seen for over ten years. Of course, my will and my retirement and insurance paperwork list my wife as my prime beneficiary. But my closest friend is 25 years younger than I, has three children whom I love dearly, and his finances are shaky at best. I’ve provided him as my contingent beneficiary to at least make sure what I can leave goes to those whom I care about. Though sex is out of the question, if both our wives should predecease us and such a thing were legal here, I’d be more than willing to enter into a D.P. with him (assuming he were willing) to assure that he and the kids get what I can leave behind when I go. Otherwise my retirement goes to enrich the coffers of the State of New York, some mysterious tontine retirement fund in Denver, and so on. If my wife predeceases me (a likely event), what I’m in possession of at time of death will go to him, but any retirement income that would have gone to my spouse gets dumped back into the kitty. At present that means I leave him a few hundred dollars, and some tens of thousands that would have gone to my wife if she survived me go to fund the New York State Museum of Cheese or the repaving of an on-ramp for the Long Island Expressway. With a valid D.P. those funds would provide for him and the kids. So there is a totally non-homosexual argument for allowing same-sex domestic partnerships.
