What would be the sensible explanation for maintaining discrete terms for two identical institutions? It strikes me as a rather stupid redundancy.
Let me guess: Keeping a separate fountain for white folk and black folk: practical.
Makes about as much sense as your comment.
Yes, and I think this is a bad thing. There are people who have an extreme, irrational fear or antipathy toward homosexuals or homosexuality, and it’s useful to have a term to describe this attitude, and not rob the term of all meaning by using it to name-call anyone who holds any position that homosexuals find objectionable.
Is this thread’s question a semantic one? Does it turn on the definition of the word “homophobic,” and/or on the definition of the word “marriage”?
I can imagine a person without an ouce of homophobia in his body, believeing that the word “marriage” connotes a union between a man and a woman.
In fact, for the overwhelming majority of people throughout history (including homosexual people), it would never have occured to the them that marriage wasn’t just between a man and a woman.
In that broader sense I would say yes it is.
Using a limited sense to mean fear then no. But I would say it is certainly bigoted.
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I think it is to answer the usual religious objections to a gay marriage.
Really if you think about it there are two separate things happening when someone gets married. Generally a religious aspect and a legal aspect.
So, avoid the religious right objections the government can say that, as a legal matter, a mechanism exists for any two people who formally want to hitch their futures together. This grants them access to things like inheritance protections should one or the other die and equitable division of assets should they break up and so on. So, a “legal union”.
Then you have the religious aspect. If a given church does not want to consecrate a marriage between a same sex couple that is the church’s own lookout. You do not want the government dictating that to them anyway. The gay couple can either find a religious institution that will do this for them or they can have a judge do the legal union.
Makes sense to me.
I firmly believe that if you really hate the idea of gay marriage, you certainly have the right to not marry someone of your own sex.
Beyond that, opposing it is just as offensive as saying Jews shouldn’t be able to adopt.
But as I understand magellan’s position (from this and other threads) he’s not proposing two different terms as a way to circumvent someone else’s objection, but is himself objecting to using the same term to describe both kinds of couples. IIRC, he has stated before that he would support a civil union law giving all the rights of marriage to homosexual couple only on the provision that the relationship not be called marriage. If the law simply expanded the definition of marriage to include homosexual couples, he would vote against it.
Never-the-less, the State(s) and the Feds themselves use the term “marriage” for that legal union between a man and a woman.
Having the State/Feds decide that it needs two different words to describe, what is in effect, the same legal relationship between the two different couples, based solely on their gender makeup, is what makes the homosexual community feel that they are being treated as a second class citizenry (or at least, a second class legally recognised union) in this case.
Watching Magellan get his ass handed to him: priceless 
In what manner does it “degrade language”?
If I’m not mistaken, the quote referenced in the OP is out of context. And that goes with what I’d have to say in regard to the question posed in the OP.
From my experiences with more conservative Christians, the fact of the matter is this: The majority of the one-man/one-woman advocates are using it as rationalization to brace up their homophobia.
But not all of them.
There’s a small, percentagewise, but strategic group that sees marriage as something sacred, ordained by God and specifically for family and children, produced by the formerly universal child-starting knack. 
These people ake umbrage in describing what gay people want, legal equality for their unions, by the name of something important and precious to them. But in general they support civil unions or other means of ensuring equal treatment under law. Think of it as something like: “your daughter is not identical to my son, and doesn’t deserve to be called “son and heir” legally – but she still deserves equal treatment. And disinheriting her because she is not a boy is not equal treatment and should be changed.”
I don’t agree with their position (I support full gay marriage), but unlike the homophobes’ position I can see how it could be defensible.
Not sure I really see that.
I mean it is just semantics in the end if the end effect is exactly the same. If selling it to the public for the government to allow it means the feds/states change all “marriage” in the law to “legal unions” then so be it. Who cares…you can still call yourself married.
Bottom line no group in our country should be denied the same legal protections that other groups enjoy. Call it what you want if it makes you feel better, attend churches that refuse to “marry” someone if you want. Just do not discriminate against an entire class of citizens.
Correct.
Like it or not, marriage is an institution tightly tied to the begetting of children. Historically, it is an institution that solidifies a relationship between a man and a woman creating a stable unit, mainly for children. This is what the word means. I don’t see why extending the legal rights afforded through the institution means we have to degrade the language. I see this simply as a strategy for legitimacy and full acceptance. And I see the benefit to that strategy. But I find it greatly offensive. I think there are other roads to that end. Demanding equal legal rights is a righteous argument—wanting what others get to enjoy without it affecting anything else. But when you ask me to contort the language, it gets my hackles up. As time moves on we make language more specific, not less.
Yeah, yeah, language changes, blah, blah, blah. But as soon as marriage becomes broader we’ll come up with another term that means what it has meant all along. So, why don’t we choose a different word right now? Civil Union sounds good to me, but I’m sure there are other terms.
And the discussion gets even more ridiculous if you want to start using terms like “husband” and “wife”.
I’d argue that by saying “you give all the rights and privileges, except the name” people miss out on the idea that the name itself will affect those things. I’d say that if the name is not the same, you cannot guarantee those same end effects.
That’s impossible. Didn’t you see that the Vitriol Shield was ACTIVATED. Sheesh.
Nice, though.
This is the crux of it. We extended rights to females without erasing the meaning of words like “son”, “daughter”, “male”, “female”. We even made a new one, “heiress”. Language serves us best when it is more specific, not less.
Which is why I suggested in the law all reference to “marriage” is expunged and replaced with “legal union” (or equivalent). The law would make no reference to this being a male/female only thing.
Of course people would still describe themselves as married. I suspect over time it will trickle into the language and just mean “two people who have agreed to commit to each other formally”.
I say the gay community should get its foot in the door if they have to call it “civil unions” and fight the terminology battle down the road.
Sure you can. Just look at Polycarp’s example of heir and heiress. Look at women and the right to vote and own land. They didn’t seek to be called men. They sought the same rights as men. In the end, men have the rights, women have the rights, and the language remains unadulterated. That’s win-win-win.
I have to go now. I have to get in my vehicle and meet someone at a building that serves food to people in the middle of the day.
[Vitriol Field: SUPER-ACTIVATED]
What term should we use to describe childless couples? Should we have two different terms to distinguish those who are infertile from those who are childless by choice? And if an infertile couple elects to adopt, can they now call themselves married or do we need to invent yet another term for a union whose children are not produced by blood?
Just want to make sure we aren’t, y’know, degrading the language and all.
I don’t think the parallels you’re drawing are exactly accurate.
Women fought to vote, to own land, to enter into contracts. They didn’t fight to be called men. They just wanted the same rights as men.
Homosexuals are fighting to enter into marriage. They’re not fighting to be called hetero. They just want the same rights as heteros.
We don’t call a vote cast by a woman anything other than a vote. A contract with a woman as one of the parties is still just a contract. A marriage between two homosexuals is still just a marriage.
When will we stop letting post-menopausal women and the sterile marry? They are destroying our culture!!!1one
Dear Magellan:
On behalf of my wife of 33 years, our legally valid and coventanted before God marriage, and the nonexistent children of our bodies that we were unable to have, you are cordially invited to perform autocopulation.
A marriage is a commitment between two (or possibly more, a separate debate) to a lifelong exclusive union (at least in intent) as spouses. Children, whether produced by the traditional method, in vitro fertilization, or adoption, are a common but not mandatory consequent.
There was a time when “citizen” meant “free white male over 21 who owned property”. Times change. Equality before the law does not.
Rather than arguing with people, I think you should probably just repeat this to yourself for about an hour until you get over your objection. (I left the “yeah yeahs” so you could sing it if you get bored.) The idea that this “degrades” or “contorts” language is your own and it’s I think it’s totally irrelevant to the actual issue. Taking offense at it is absurd; you’re not the one being deprived of anything. If gays are given all the rights involved in marriage, and I think they should be, then it’s pointless to call it something else - and using another term really smacks of “separate but equal” to my ears.