Why do gays insist on marriage?

Great Debates
1

I don’t know where this will go. I suspect it will be moved even though I’m sure there must be an answer to it.

I seriously want to know why gays insist on marriage and are not content with civil unions? If the term “content with” sounds as if it’s less then marriage or as if I’m saying “Take what you can get, be happy, and shut up.” That is not my intent.

Do civil unions address all of the rights issues that are the basis for wanting marriage? Or not? Please explain your answer and don’t just say “Yes” or “No”.

Thank you.

END OF QUESTION. WHAT FOLLOWS ARE JUST MY OPINIONS AND OBSERVATIONS AND NOT PART OF THE QUESTION.***********

They call us “breeders” and things like that. Whatever. If some find hetero’s so despicable why do they want to be “like us”? Again, not a term meant to be derisive, just an observation from personal experience.

My personal opinion is that if they are allowed to get married then they can say “Well now you can’t call us ‘sinners’ because now we’re married and can have sex.” Seriously, this is what I believe. And I say this because if every other issue is resolved and there is no longer any rights that are denied, without marriage, then why would it matter still? Don’t misunderstand me. I’m fine with gay marriage. If you want to lose half your stuff to someone then go for it. I’m also okay if you want to marry a tree too. I’m most certainly against any marriage that violates another persons rights or a child being involved. I absolutely reject any pedophile being able to marry the child of his (or hers) choice.

As to the argument that gay marriage will destroy the fabric of our society, I also reject that. Given the current divorce rate I’d say hetero’s haven’t exactly lived up to the standard they so adamantly demand homosexuals adhere to. And to all of the divorced Christians that marry 2 and 3 times (and more) and shudder at the thought of gay marriage just remember : According to the Bible YOU ARE AN ADULTERER (which is the sin that homosexuals are accused of committing if they participate in sexual acts).

2

Here’s the thing: look at it the other way. Why shouldn’t gays be awarded the same right to get married as heterosexuals?

You think they should be happy with a second-class certificate?

3

I’ll answer this as though it were a serious question.

Gays/gay couples do not “insist on” marriage. Many are content with civil unions; many are content with no formalization of their union at all. In this, they are just like heterosexual couples.

What they want is the ability to marry the persons they love. This would seem to me to be a fundamental right. For society to say that gay couples cannot marry is to say that their unions are less legitimate than those of heterosexuals. Yet, no reason to consider them that way current exists. Gay marriages produce no children–but there are certainly such things as childless heterosexual marriages, and we don’t consider such couples not to be married as a consequence. In terms of commitment to each other, forming a cohesive partnership, etc., gay couples have those characteristics just the same as heterosexual couples.

I won’t go into any possible religious objections to gay marriage since no religion has the right to tell anyone what to do.

I perceive a positive social effect of gay marriage, in that it enables a couple who love each other to form a socially validated, cohesive bond. In allowing such marriages, then, we are merely allowing the acknowledgement of something that already exists. And I certainly see a negative effect of forbidding it, in that we are thereby diminishing the happiness of X amount of people, in return for no gain whatsoever but the lip-smacking satisfaction of a few homophobes and Bible-thumpers.

4

Why did brown insist his daughter should be able to go to a white school when his daughter had a negro school she could attend?

5

Moved to Great Debates.

Colibri
General Questions Moderator

6

Marriage is a specific social contract that endows the participants with a number of rights, a number of privileges, and a number of obligations. Those rights, privileges, and obligations have been hammered out in several hundred years of Common Law and are pretty well understood and accepted by both courts and legislatures.

Civil Union is a new phrase to label a similar social contract that has never been subjected to the same lengthy process of legislative and judicial review. A person who enters a Civil Union, for example, does not have the ability to file a Federal tax form under “married, filing jointly” (or even “married, filing separately”). There is not yet the case law or Federal statute that guarantees that a member of a Civil Union has the automatic power of attorney granted to married spouses in the event that one is disabled if that disability occurs in a state that fails to recognize Civil Unions. (For example, if a couple joined ina Civil Union was involved in a traffic accident in Ohio, there is no guarantee that a hospital would be required to allow the uninjured (or less injured) party authorize specific medical treatment–or even be allowed to visit the more seriously injured party in an ICU that was restricted to family members.)

Permitting same sex couple to enter into marriage removes those issues by recognizing them as having the same relationship as heterosexual married couples.

= = =

On a side note, “They” don’t call anyone “breeders.” Some number of homosexuals refer to heterosexuals as “breeders” in the same way that many heterosexuals refer to homosexuals as “fags,” “queers,” “dykes,” etc. No argument should be based on an overbroad generalization of what the least courteous members of a group might happen to do, particularly when they are not representative of the entire group.

7

Maybe it’s cause they are drama queens.

8

American gays, I assume you mean. Maybe they’re envious of Canadian gays, who’ve been allowed to legally marry for nearly seven years now. Why do Americans fear our freedom? What are they, chicken? Bwock-bwock-bwock…

9

Because civil unions are the “colored people’s water fountain” version of marriage; they exist in order to be inferior to marriage. And because it’s insulting to them.

No, and they can’t. First, because the word “marriage” has a legal meaning that “civil union” does not. Second, because the fact that they are separate institutions means that even if they were equal, they wouldn’t stay that way. And third, since the whole motivation of relegating them to a"civil union" is one of bigotry, there’s no chance it will be treated as the equal of marriage. “Separate but equal isn’t”; just like racial “separate but equal”, the whole point is that they aren’t equal.

10

I think we should go in the opposite direction: Get the State out of the “marriage” business altogether. Let “marriage” be a religious institution, to be conducted by churches, synagogues, etc., according to the rules and precepts of the religion’s doctrine; but having no legal meaning in our civil society.

Separately, let the State confine itself to granting “civil unions” for any couple. Let these “civil unions” carry all the legal status: Options for filing taxes; hospital visitation; right to make health care decisions for disabled partner; shared financial and fiduciary privileges and obligations; inheritance, and on and on. All couples would want to create such a legal civil union for all the usual reasons, entirely independently of whether they got religiously “married” in any church.

So a “typical” religious hetero couple would get “married” in a church ceremony AND get a “civil union” from the State. An atheist hetero couple (or any couple that just doesn’t care about church ceremony) could skip that, and just go for the “civil union”. A gay couple could get religiously “married” in any church that allows gay marriage (and if they want to be Catholic or other religion that doesn’t recognize gay marriage, that’s no business of the State to get involved with). AND a gay couple would get the “civil union” in addition to or instead of the church marriage.

Get it?

Marriage = Church ceremony, according to each church’s rules. Churches can deny gay marriages if their doctrine says so. Gays don’t have to choose such a church if they don’t want to.

Civil union = Civil legal certificate, carrying all the legal status of that which we currently call a “marriage”. Open to any couple, of any gender combination.

I saw an article once, claiming that some gay activist group had compiled a catalog of some 400 legal rights, priviliges, duties, obligations, etc., pertaining to married couples. The whole collection of these is what the whole argument about gay marriage is about. I suggest building a wall of separation between “marriage” and all that, for straights or gays alike.

11

A marriage is a marriage, with all married couples having the same rights.

A civil union can be anything you call this way. A “civil union” between gays in the UK grants exactly the same rights as an heterosexual marriage if I’m not mistaken. A “civil union” between gays in France doesn’t grant at all the same rights (nor carry the same obligations).

12

That would let the homophobes blame homosexuals for destroying marriage, enrage millions of people who would be offended that their marriage is no longer legally “marriage”, and mean that atheists/agnostics can’t get married without what amounts to ritual humiliation. And it’s pointless since it doesn’t punish homosexuals, which is the whole point of “civil unions” in the first place; if you aren’t going to do that there’s no reason to call anything a civil union anyway.

13

Thank you tomndebb for that informative answer. Those are things I was not aware of.

To those trying to say it’s just like what blacks had to go through are not only insulting but very ill informed about what black Americans had to go through. But you’re entitled to your right to convoluted thinking.

I consider my question answered. Debate further if you must.

14

Sinegoid has it right. One state function is to enforce contracts.

If you say that marriage rights can be replicated precisely without the word “marriage” on the part of the state, remove the magical word from all such unions. Since “civic union” is so long, just say people are “merried” or “martyred” or “mauried” or somesuch. I don’t care actually. Then replace the word “married” as needed throughout the tax law and elsewhere. Oh yeah and you’ll need to replace “spouse” with something too.

Then the magic word can be reserved for your church or internet service provider or ship captain or whoever you like to believe can bestow the magic word.

It would be a distinction that narrow communities could recognize and socially reward and punish as they see fit, just without the state apparatus to continually reinforce said religious preference. You would be equal under the law, but not within the social world of a given denomination.

Were a gay not permitted to marry in one or another denomination, he would clearly have the option of going to a more open denomination, or to accept the discrimination of his own denomination.

The state would then have to stop at the church door, as it were; having separated church from state, the state could not very well tell a discriminatory denomination that it must cease and desist. But a discriminatory denomination could not dictate that a less discriminatory one not use the magic words “marriage,” “married,” “husband,” “wife,” etc., etc., etc.

It truly tickles me that the same people who would “defend marriage” participate in the heterosexual version which results half the time in divorce, and produces no end of domestic abuse. I am not saying that gays won’t in time have parallel numbers, particularly once marriage is a normal option within the gay community. I am just saying that marriage attains this gleaming theoretical place in people’s minds which must be “defended” – and meanwhile, our practice within this estate is fairly shabby, all in all.

You want to defend your marriage? Go to counseling.

15

No; the ones using “convoluted thinking” are the ones trying hard to avoid admitting the obvious parallels. And calling it “insulting” is itself insulting to homosexuals.

16

Why should non-religious people have a perfectly good word stolen from them? If some churches are too bigoted, petty, and insular to share a word nicely, why should they be the ones given the good term? And yes, “marriage” is a lot better than “civil union,” by design, since the term “civil union” was invented to place certain relationships beneath real marriages. Churches that don’t want to share nicely can come up with their own degrading word since they’re the only ones deserving of degradation. (I say “religious union.” Goose, gander, etc.)

17

They’re called “covenant marriages,” although they might think the gays are trying to steal those too if SSM ever passes in a state that also has legally-recognized covenant marriages.

18

But aren’t “covenant marriages” just a legal concept that makes divorce harder? (At least inasmuch as they exist. The last I heard, they were a pretty big flop in the states that had them.) Are there any churches that only recognize covenant marriages, or that even treat covenant marriages differently?

19

Way to passive-aggravate, there.

20

In most states, they’re just a way for churchy people to feel smug about their “real” marriages, so they would fit the bill perfectly as a way for religious people to “let” us normal folks have the word marriage. In the states where they’re legally recognized, the more restrictive divorce rules work excellently up until the point that a couple decides they don’t want to be married anymore.