Woah, a quote! True, it shows you have no idea what my criticism was, but you sure did quote Wiki. Gotta give you that.
Daniel
Translation: “Oops.”
Okay, I understand your misuse of the word “meme”; it’s a pretty common bastardization (albeit usually by leftwing pseudointellectuals). But I thought you’d know what the word “oops” means. THat one is surprising.
Daniel
Now that’s well done. We can quibble as to whether using a word outside it’s original meaning equates to misuse, but I appreciate a well crafted arrow. Regardless of its target.
I gotta ask. What exactly is the point of calling government recognition of all marriage “civil union”? I mean, if the government recognizes your marriage but calls it a civil union, so what?
I suppose it comes from the notion that marriage is a religious concept, and since government should stay out of religion, government shouldn’t recognize marriages. Except it turns out that people are married, and so the government has to call it something, so we’ll call it civil union. Except so what?
Marriage is not a religious concept. It is a feature of every human society, and likely predates the existance of Homo sapiens sapiens. I’m a stone atheist, and I’m married to my wife. No God or other supernatural entity had anything to do with it, and neither did any government. My wife and I married each other as free human beings, the government didn’t marry us, God didn’t marry us, a preacher didn’t marry us, we married each other.
Turns out that we human beings have some persistent ideas about some things. Like, marriage, parenthood, stuff like that. And so while we can imagine a government that is blind to spousal relationships, or parent-child relationships, what would be the point? Such things exist, and government was made for man, not man for the government. And so we have laws such that if people are married, the law recognizes certain default assumptions, about inheritance, power of attorney, financial stuff, and so on.
But marriage isn’t a creation of the law. It existed before any law was ever written, and while the first humans undoubtedly had some sort of beliefs about the supernatural, their supernatural beliefs didn’t create marriage, rather the prexistance of marriage created supernatural beliefs about marriage.
So what’s the point of labeling laws about marriage laws about “civil unions”? What’s the purpose of carefully not mentioning the word “marriage” in any law book? What public policy is served?
For me, it’s not that marriage is a religious concept; I know it’s not always. It’s an emotional, relationship concept. I have a mild distaste for the government being involved in my emotional relationships. I don’t want my friendships to be legitimized (or delegitimized) by court order; neither do I especially like having my marriage legitimized by court order. It’s my loved ones who make my marriage significant to me, not the justice of the peace, and not society at large. To the extent that having the government use the term “marriage” compels society to recognize and approve of other folks’ relationships, I don’t much like that: I want to be free to think a particular marriage is rubbish if I want to.
The other public policy served by “civil unions” is that there are people who are not in romantic/sexual relationships who may desire this same set of reciprocal rights–e.g., unwed siblings who live together, or best-friend bachelors. It’d be nice if these reciprocal rights were easily available to such people.
Now. I admit that SSM is moving along a lot faster than I thought it would, while the idea of civil-unions-for-all is gaining no traction. I’ll also say that both of my reasons for supporting CU-for-all over SSM are minor reasons. Since I see SSM as a very close second in terms of desirable public policies (I’d rather CU for all, but SSM is pretty damn great, too), I’m delighted with this outcome. As long as progress is being made on SSM, my preference for CU for all will remain purely hypothetical. If SSM stalls for a long time, I might start agitating for CU for all instead. But for now, I’m ecstatic with SSM’s progress.
Daniel
Yes, but your marriage isn’t “legitimized” because you have that piece of paper, rather the government is simply being informed by you that your marriage exists. If you want to live with your wife and call yourself married and not get any sort of marriage license you are perfectly welcome to do so, the only problem comes when you’re in a coma and the doctors are looking around for your next of kin and you didn’t bother to let them know beforehand that your wife is your next of kin.
The birth certificate you get when your kids are born isn’t what makes you a parent to that child. It’s just a document that informs everyone else who might care that you actually are the parent to that child, and anyone else who claims otherwise is wrong.
And the idea that if you call the legal arrangenment “marriage” that means that you are forced to approve or support or cheer any particular marriage is…hard to understand. You’re free to think anyone’s marriage is rubbish or not, what does the fact that they have a scrap of paper signed by the county clerk have to do with it? You don’t have to approve of their relationship, but if you were, say, a doctor, and they have that document, you’re legally obligated to treat their spouse as next of kin, regardless of how stupid you think they are and how rubbish their marriage is. You aren’t a priest blessing their sacred union, you’re simply following their previously stated instructions, regardless of how stupid you think those instructions might be.
Ditto.
And Lemur866, I’m just slightly torqued that people who mostly agree with you are considered Wrong and Bigoted and Homophobic and Bad, Bad, Bad. I think you should be able to marry whomsoever you damn well choose, but because I think it should be done in a different way for everyone, not just you, I’m bad? I mean, I don’t agree with magellan01 that I’d vote against gay marriage because I didn’t want to put the m-word on it, but the bigot label turns me right off.
Where did he say that?
The problem is that I’m arguing against two mutually exclusive positions here. Many people claim that the entire reason to make SSM legally marriage is that it’s important to have that social legitimization of marriage. You’re saying that no such social legitimization of marriages exists.
I’m with the former group, and I don’t think that legitimization should exist in any particular instance. I believe the word “marriage” has, in addition to the legal denotation of the word, plenty of social connotations. I believe those social connotations are accurately applied to any long-term romantic and/or sexual relationships between two or more adults who consent to call their relationship a marriage. That group is very similar to the group to whom I believe civil union rights ought to be extended. But the two groups aren’t exactly the same (I’m willing to consider poly folks to be married, but extending the reciprocal rights of CU to them is a crazy barrel of monkeys with all kinds of thorny legal implications and unsettled questions that don’t arise when granting CU to adult couples; and my previously-mentioned best-pal bachelors may want CU rights without wanting the connotations of the word “Marriage” applied to them).
And I’m going to say it once more in this thread as a preventative measure: I recognize that my preference for CU for all is very minor and based on minor reasons. They’re real reasons, but trivial compared to the importance of obtaining equality under the law for SS couples.
Daniel
Being niether gay nor married, not much of a dog for this fight, but…
I have some optimism. This time, I think, my optimisim has some foundation in fact, which is a nice change of itself.
I think the Forces of Darkness overplayed their hand. Notice how little air play the whole “gays gettin hitched” is getting, this time out. They tried to be scary, and then people see pictures of gays getting married and they are so…well, normal. “Gee, that woman looks a lot like Aunt Esther…wait a minute, that is Aunt Esther!!”
Sudden and drastic change invites reaction. Little victories is, most often, the surest road to progress.
He didn’t. I don’t have any particular problem with what he said, and I didn’t intend to give that impression.
Can I get an Amen?
I remember flipping through the pictures of the happy couples in… San Francisco, I think it was? There was such amazing joy in those faces. It shone right off the page. Young, old, handsome, pretty, plain, every single face was beautiful.
You’re tricking yourself. The Fundies are massing and preparing to use their arsenals. It will be mass insurrection and chaos. Their battle cry, “We shall not suffer cats and dogs living together!”
“Spot? Fluffy? I’ve bad news, I’m afraid. You see that steel cage? Well…”
And this just in…
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/07/03/mcdonalds-boycott/
(Warning! Lefty site! Anti-cooty protocols as required…)
Well, shit. If I gotta go scarf a Pig Mac and fries to express my solidarity, then so be it!
Meanwhile … up here in Canada, we just wonder what all the fuss is about. 
[Actually, I know some gays who are against gay marriage, basically because they don’t want to be “just like everyone else” - in their eyes at least, gay means at least to a certain extent a culture of excitement and rebellion against the norms of ‘straight society’. Being reduced from a sexual rebel outlaw to your average suburbanite couple via the normalizing rituals of marriage - Ozzy and Ozzy rather than Ozzy and Harriet - strikes them as a bad idea, now that it is here. Though of course just because marriage exists doesn’t mean you have to do it, at least some people think that the effect will be to dilute or destroy a distinctive gay culture. Better than persecution I would have thought, myself. ]
Well, that puts a whole new spin on going to Sonic for some poppers, doesn’t it.
You can buy amyl nitrate at a drive-in?
Heh, if I didn’t know more about human stupidity, I’d assume that this was really a viral marketing campaign by McD’s. 
Marraige is largely a social institution, often but not always containing a religious element. I fully support the concept of Gay marrage, and understand why a legal Civil Union does not meet the needs of many in the gay community.
As to clear up any doubt about my apology, it was directed to all the members of this online community we call the Straight Dope. We are a varied and wildly different bunch of individuals who for the most part get along rather well. It was not a retraction of my views, an apology to Magellian specifically, or an idication of ambivilance on the issue of Gay marraige.
Magellian01 is as entitled to his opinion as anyone else is on these boards. We are also welcome to post our responses to his statements. I find people who express ideas like his as a blight on the growth of human potential, as they seek to limit our ability to join together, based upon his unenlightened and ugly mindset. He is entitled to that mindset… I on the otherhand am entitled to say what I think and feel about it.
I do not apologise to Magellian01 for what I said, or how I feel about the issue. I do apologise to all for how poorly I did. It was my first PIt and will likely be my last, at least directed at a fellow doper.
Regards
'FML