Point out the place in this thread where we all agreed to this.
Not most, but many.
.
No, forced to change because it’s morally right. Tradition or the lack of tradition has nothing to do with it.
Marriage is when two consenting adults decide to marry each other.
Men and women can make that decision. Washing machines cannot.
Yes. I’ve made this point before: the word “marriage” is not a Christian word. It derives from a pre-Christian Latin word.
The concept “marriage” is not a Christian concept. It is found among all sorts of non-Christian societies.
Since both of these things are unassailably true, why should I let Christian sensibilities define my relationship or my secular government’s policies?
Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice are all recognized as adults who have the right to enter a marriage. In one set of circumstances, Bob might marry Carol and Ted might marry Alice. In a different set of circumstances, Bob might have married Alice and Ted might have married Carol. But that makes no difference. As long as we recognize that all four of them, as individuals, have the right to get married then they can choose to marry any other individual who has the right to marry.
And that means that if Bob has the right to get married and Ted has the right to get married, then Bob and Ted have the right to marry each other. That’s equal treatment under the law.
Washing machines and goats and ten year old children are not recognized as having a right to get married - to a person of either sex.
You’re awfully late to the discussion, aren’t you?
Massachusetts Supreme Court Chief Justice Margaret Marshall explained in a post-Goodridge advisory ruling: “The dissimilitude between the terms ‘civil marriage’ and ‘civil union’ is not innocuous; it is a considered choice of language that reflects a demonstrable assigning of same-sex, largely homosexual, couples to second-class status. For no rational reason the marriage laws of the Commonwealth discriminate against a defined class; no amount of tinkering with language will eradicate that stain.”
Make sense to you? If your response is “Well, some people are offended by it, and their religious beliefs are against it”, then the appropriate reply is “Tough shit then, they can suck it up and respect the Constitution and its equal protection guarantees”.
Too greasy for me!
Because equality is only equality, when it’s perfectly equal, including in name.
If it’s ‘just like marriage’ then call it marriage. Call it anything else and it’s no longer ‘just like’, in fact, it is decidedly, overtly and distinctly not ‘just the same’.
(How is this not self evident?)
This always gets me. Are you married? Is the most important aspect of your marriage the shape of your and your spouse’s genitalia?
Because I’m married, and when I think about what it means to be married, what comes to mind first isn’t “One of us has indoor plumbing, and the other has outdoor plumbing.” Defining marriage in such a fashion is demeaning, pathetic, and ridiculous, in my opinion, and I absolutely don’t want the meaning of my marriage undermined in such a manner.
The traditional meaning of marriage is something else entirely.
No, I’m not; I’m banning everyone from marrying washing machines. I don’t care whether you’re male or female, black or white, gay or straight, able-bodied or confined to a wheelchair, active-duty military or lifelong civilian – or, y’know, cleanlosexual or whatever-the-opposite-of-cleanlosexual is: they’re all banned.
Stop agitating for washing-machine marriage!
They just ain’t ready for it yet. Heck, mine still insists on separating whites and coloreds.
And this sort of thing is, at best, a sign that you’ve barely thought through the words you’re typing, and haven’t taken a second to consider them before hitting “Submit Reply.” You’d do well in the future to ask yourself a basic question: is my point too ridiculous to live? Will posting this just embarrass myself?
Because if you’d asked yourself that, you’d see that this avenue of attack is incoherent. Figuring out how to apply the ideas of marriage to same-sex couples is not only easy in theory, it’s trivial in practice: it’s now been done tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of times, with virtually no legal hiccups. It’s what I call a red crayon law, inasmuch as a kindergartener with a red crayon and someone to teach her to recognize the words “husband” and “wife” and to write the word “spouse” could enact the necessary changes to the law. Figuring out how to apply the myriad principles of marriage to an inanimate object (how does custody work? What about taxes? Ownership? Inheritance?) has got to be the dumbest idea since waffle panties.
I think this misses the question. There is an argument against “separate but equal” civil unions, as demonstrated in jurisdictions such as New Zealand that do have SBECU.
Given that there are jurisdictions such as NZ, that do have SBECU, and that LGBTI are not satisified by it, what is the argument?
I could make an attempt at the argument myself, but given that I personally see no role for the state in the church, and no role for the church in the state, I’d probably not give a fair representation.
Welll…
I hate to be a bucket of cold water but at this point in the process the best argument against Civil Unions (equal or not) is that we’re winning. There’s no longer any point in trying to settle for something other than true, recognized marriage of same-sex couples. Why back off when we’ve got momentum?
I realize that might not address the original question, but it strikes me that it’s going to be moot soon enough. I realize some might disagree with me - and please do so - but I’m a dice thrower. The minute the Sixth Circuit court upheld the bans within its domain the dice were thrown. How it comes up, and whether it’s this year or next, is still up for grabs. But I think the wind is at the back of SSM and it would be foolish to settle for less.
Hell, even in my own state of South Carolina - of which there’s not much redder in the country - SSM is running only 52% against. 52%! This is a state so conservative I know people still arguing about the right of the war! A judge has ruled that the SC ban on SSM is unconstitutional and stayed enforcement until 11/20 (next Thursday) to allow the Attorney General to file an appeal. Cross all the t’s, dot all the i’s. Let’s make sure this is done absolutely right and let’s win this thing for good.
Have there been abuses in New Zealand, a civilly-unioned coupled denied access to something that a married couple would get? If not, good for them. I hope they keep it up.
Yes, the traditional marriage in the past couldn’t be dissolved. Allowing divorce definitely watered down the meaning of marriage. And this time in a very serious way. You can’t view marriage in the same way if you think it will last until the death of one of the partners, regardless of what happens, and if you think it will end up at any time for any reason.
Divorce changed the meaning of marriage in a vastly more important way than SSM could possibly do. It changed completely its very nature for everybody involved.
I would even say that something like spousal rape being a crime instead of spousal sex being a duty also changed the nature of marriage more than SSM can.
And you could add changes that aren’t legal but social : the general expectation that a marriage will based on love, for instance.
SSM is really amongst the smallest changes “traditional marriage” has been undertaking during the last century. “Traditional marriages” went the way of the dodo long ago.
This is basically what I was about to post. Same-sex marriage is now legally recognized in most of the US, and at this point it seems safe to assume that it will soon be legal in all 50 states. So even if a “separate but equal” civil union offer were seriously on the table – and it’s not, and never has been – there’d be no good reason for proponents of SSM to accept such an offer now.
Civil marriage is a consensual contract between two legal parties. Loving vs Virginia said that two people who had the right to otherwise contract to be married, could not be denied the right to marry because they were of different races. there is no right to form a marriage contract with a washing machine regardless of the color of one party’s skin or the machines paint because there can be no legal contract with an inanimate object. your problem is not that you don’t understand the definition of civil marriage, its that you don’t understand what makes a contract a legal contract.