It seems to me that marriage is a social construct with fairly strict parameters for legitimacy. And that allowing nontraditional partners to marry both undermines the construct and waters down meaning to those who care about the idea of “traditional marriage.”
I’d like to hear why same-sex civil unions, if granted the same legal rights as marriages, would not be satisfying to gays.
From my perspective, it seems that gays would receive the rights they desire, without receiving the socially conservative titles of “married people” that their opponents prefer that they not be considered for the reasons mentioned above.
Because I cannot imagine any persons not jumping at the chance to have their relationship officially and legally designated as not worthy of the name “marriage.”
A hundred years ago, women should have been satisfied with getting “Government Representation Input Survey” rights instead of the vote, as well.
Separate but equal never stays both separate or equal.
Can you be more specific, please? Note that I (a happily married straight guy with many happily married gay/lesbian friends) have a “traditional marriage” that’s very important to me, the meaning of which is strengthened by the fact that my LG friends can get married now. Note that I’ve asked for specifics many times and never gotten a clear answer. Note that the mass of court decisions striking down SSM bans are predicated on no clear answer ever having been given to that question.
Well you could start with states amending their constitutions to explicitly ban same-sex civil unions that granted the same legal rights as marriages, making it impossible.
Well, there’s the problem of such a thing not existing. I guess there’s no reason to assume a unicorn-burger would not be satisfying, either… if it existed.
The whole concept of “civil unions” was invented to appease bigots who wanted gay people to have a lesser social status. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I want legal and social equality. That means getting the same words as everyone else, the same choice of cakes as everyone else, etc. I’m fine with supporters of “traditional marriage” not getting what they want, because I want them to lose and me to win. If they still want separation after that, they can go and separate themselves and live in a commune or something like that.
(Really, did the server just regurgitate a thread from 2006? I had to check the date, because I haven’t heard civil unions proposed as a serious solution in years.)
The second part of your post is a slippery slope argument.
As to the first part, if same-sex civil unions don’t meet the criteria of marriage, then they categorically are not marriage. People may be offended but the facts of the matter lie where they are.
Well, yes. That’s why civil unions are inadequate, and why people are offended by them. They’re not marriage.
So, you’re right. People were offended, so they changed the criteria of marriage. That’s why so many jurisdictions that once offered only civil unions to same-sex couples now offer marriage as well (or instead).
No. It is not a slippery slope. It is a historical reality. Not only did it already happen once in U.S. history, there is a principle in law that guarantees that it would happen again.
You will note that many laws use multiple words to describe the same acts. This is because when laws are considered for enforcement, each word is considered to have a particular meaning that differs from other words. A claim that “civil union” is separate from marriage but equal to it would mean, since the words are different, that some future legislature or judge would look at a particular situation in which one couple or another was getting cheated or abused, and declare that they did not have the same rights and responsibilities as a married couple as long as the treatments were (subjectively) “equal.”
Those criteria are arbitrarily determined, though, and there’s no reason they can’t be altered. I suggest this is one of the concerns with accepting a (hypothetical) separate-but-equal arrangement: it can be casually changed later, i.e let’s put the white students in one school and the black students in a different school - establishing separate equalities. Now let’s just put funding priority on the white school. Let’s view a diploma from the black school as less valuable as one from the white school. Let’s do all kinds of things, just as long as we still have a white school and a black school and the illusion of separate equalities.
If instead we put all students in the same school, then trying to keep a particular subset of students “in their place” becomes more difficult.
In what way does a non-traditional marriage undermine anything? In what way does a non-traditional marriage “water down” any meaning?
Couples joining in love, sharing rights and responsibilities, raising families together can occur regardless of the sex of each member of the couple. Making claims that there is some harm while providing no reason to believe it is not persuasive.
It sounds like you have a legal background so I’ll defer to your wisdom on this point. I still find it a bit hard to believe that we can’t firmly peg the rights and protections of one class with another.
I guess that answers the question but I still feel a bit unsatisfied that the answer is “gay marriages must be marriages because there is no other way”.
If we set aside the separate but equal problem, would you guys still want gay unions to be called marriages? Or would you separate them for social policy reasons?
Specifically how does it undermine the institution and water down the meaning? What did it mean before that’s “watered down”, and what would that even mean?
If your marriage means, “this is something only straight people get to do,” then sure, maybe its meaning is watered down. However, that’s not part of the traditional definition of marriage; I’m unaware of any significant document defining marriage that specific mentions its exclusionary aspect. And that sort of exclusionary definition is by nature discriminatory, and without justification beyond “it’s always been this way,” is unjustified discrimination.
I do not claim that there is no other way. Humans can come up with lots of different ways to handle the same situations.
Referring to homosexual unions as marriages is just the best way. It means that laws and customs that address unions can be identified by a single word instead of a hodge-podge of confusing phrases. I see nothing to be gained by using separate words to identify a particular union, just based on the sex of the participants.
I suppose the church or whatever socially authoritative institution you want to look at was never subjected to a strict definition of marriage, as they seem to be today.
But just because it wasn’t written down in a document doesn’t mean there’s no definition of traditional marriage. We can look at who was married in the past and define traditional marriage based on actions alone. These considered, traditional marriage takes on a very clear picture.
There are plenty of other ways - it’s just that all of them:
Make the situation more complicated than it has to be; and/or
“Solve” the problem by taking legal marriage away from everybody.
Neither of those outcomes is better or easier than just changing “bridge and groom” to “spouse #1 and spouse #2” on some legal documents. You’re basically asking why a complicated solution is not preferred over a simple one, without explaining why the complexity is useful.
Almost every past tradition has been modified, updated and transformed as time has gone on. Why should marriage be different and held to an artificial sense of protection? I’m happy to concede that SSM is a more modern construct and in generations past marriage was assumed to be between a man and a woman.
So what? What’s so special about marriage that it shouldn’t be updated as our civilization becomes more sophisticated?
None of this answers the questions. Let me be clear:
Two of my friends are women in a long-term relationship. One of them is the biological mother of two wonderful children, born into the long-term relationship. The other would be their adoptive mother, except our state’s laws don’t allow it. They are a family.
The bio-mom’s parents are hard-core fundamentalists who refuse to acknowledge their daughter’s family. They have said that if their daughter died, they would immediately exercise their legal rights to take custody of the two children and never let their daughter’s wife see the children again.
When our state legalized SSM several Fridays ago, these two women were at the courthouse the following Monday, where they got married. Now their family is not at such terrible risk from bigoted, hateful grandparents.
Let me repeat my question: how, specifically, is any marriage undermined or watered down by allowing these two women to be married?