True. We could amend the Constitution tomorrow to allow SSM, and the day after, it could be amended back. But some changes are harder to make than others, and the problem with your proposal is that it makes it significantly easier to roll back protections for gay marriage.
We’ve seen a steady trend in increasing acceptance of homosexuality, and hopefully we’re looking at a permanent sea change in how society views gays. But that’s optimistic: there are plenty of examples in history of societies becoming less progressive. If, god forbid, we’re coming to a high water mark on gay rights, its vital that we secure the rights we currently have as tightly as possible, so if and when the pendulum swings back the other way, we don’t lose everything.
And that’s why your proposal doesn’t work for me, and for a lot of other gay people, because your proposal tracks civil unions separately from marriages. As long as their tracked separately, they can be legislated against separately, and there’s absolutely no protection in your plan against that.
I’ll third it. It’s a subject on which it’s easy for tempers to fray, and the context makes it easy to see people as us vs. them, but in the grand scheme of things there’s a hell of a lot of people more worthy of being called vile than magellan. Really, in comparison, he’s pretty much on our side.
I have a bit of a problem here, in that i’m going to try and pick apart your law but obviously not being a lawyer it would be unfair to hold you to impeccable standards. But the seperate nature of the two groups still means it’s possible to provide seperate benefits, rights, and privileges. The obvious part is still the practical efforts to halt things, but i’m sure you’d be against any people attempting to deny or otherwise infringe upon those rights unfairly. But the most obvious one that occurs to me is simply to make law altering how a civil union is brought about as compared to a marriage; you’ve highlighted, in a sense, the aftereffects, the results once the deed is done, but the law doesn’t mention the pre-contract-sealing. Too, you could ensure that the means of dissolving such a contract are different also.
True. But some laws are harder to change than others. If both are covered under “marriages” (or both under whatever name), that’s an extra step you have to take; you want to alter the law to make one different from the other, first you need to make a law that says “Oh, hey, scratch that part”.
Lesbian chiming in, I don’t want a Civil Union or to be gay-married, or married* with some kind of footnote.
I want all the rights and privileges of “traditional” marriage and that includes the word ‘marriage.’ Anything less or even simply different is unacceptable.
I find the notion that my government would label me differently based on my sexual preference and choice of spouse deeply insulting. Could an opponent of calling SSM “marriage” please explain to me the logic that trumps my feelings on the matter?
I’ve observed that the argument consists largely of “straight people have feelings, too, and respecting their feelings has been the convention for thousands of years, and there’s never been a society that cares about gays’ feelings, and straights’ feelings are special and making them acknowledge gays’ feelings makes straights’ feelings less special, and making a baby is so VERY special that… something…”
I’m not 100% certain one road to legal equality is definitively easier to undo than another. But even assuming it is, I’m fine with that. I’m trying to find a balance between two perceived goods. Most others in this thread have the luxury of caring about only one side of the equation. I value preserving the traditional meaning of “marriage”. Hell, I greatly value making sure that society has a word for that which has been such a foundational institution for our culture. To me, wanting to undo that is bizarre in the extreme. Even given the pros of doing so.
But you are different. You even refer to yourself as a lesbian. Now, different does not equal “bad” or “less”. Your genes, or choice (take your pick), put you in a minority. You cannot argue that lesbian relationships are a cornerstone of Western Civilization. But marriage between one man and one woman is.
You know, I don’t get why homosexuals don’t start actually start believing what they’ve been preaching. That is, that there is nothing “bad” or “less” about being homosexual. They’ve done it with the words “homosexual”, “gay”, “queer”, “lesbian”, right? Well, why not with another term to describe the civil union they may choose to enter into. It screams of hypocrisy and weakness that they don’t. Why can’t someone couple proudly proclaim, for instance, “Yes, we got “conjoined” last month. And we just got back from our honeymoon in Fiji.”?
Its precisely because there is nothing “bad” or “less” about being homosexual that we reject the idea that allowing us to marry will be bad for, or lessen, marriage.
It’s also really hard to understand how someone can think that letting gays marry will be bad for, or lessen, marriage, without also thinking that being gay is bad, or lesser than heterosexuality. I think most people would look at those two positions as being logically dependent on each other.
Lastly, really not seeing how hypocrisy or weakness factors in. Rolling over on this because of some undefined bad thing, that will happen at some undefined time, via some undefined mechanism, seems the weaker position. And “hypocrisy,” in this context, makes absolutely no sense to me. What value are you suggesting exists behind the celebration of the term “gay,” that you feel is betrayed by the use of the word “marriage” by gay people?
OTOH, I don’t see why anyone needs to be insulting about a situation while clearly failing to understand it.
The word homosexual is simply a clinical term for an orientation. Lesbian and gay are, similarly, less clinical terms for that orientation. It would be ludicrous to think that any of those terms was insulting unless one also believed that heterosexual and straight were, in some way, “bad” terms and I do not recall you rejecting those words for people attracted to the opposite sex.
Queer is a bit different in that it is an effort to remove the sting of a pejorative by reclaiming it.
Still, all those terms are expressly used to identify the differences between separate sexual orientations. On the other hand, marriage is the word that they choose to apply to a phenomenon that is the same–people engaged in a loving and committed relationship. Using a separate word would be a statement that when they engage in a loving and committed relationship, they do not have the right or rationale to recognize it except as “other” or “different.” You apparently wish to view it as different, with your vague and undefined appeal to marriage being “special,” but they do not and no argument has been put forth to explain why they should accept a different word. Do you also suggest that homosexual parents come up with separate words for “father” and “mother”? Do you intend to put forth separate words for the conjoining of childless heterosexual couples? Your argument lacks consistency as well as logic.
I’ve asked before if people against gay marriage think there needs to be a separate but equal word for going to dinner with a gay person, or dating a gay person, or kissing a gay person, or hugging a gay person, or hiring a gay person, or yelling at a gay person.
If it changes “marriage” somehow to have gay people involved, does it change “kayaking”? Um, need answer fast!
Having two different ward for different things doesn’t imply one is better than the other. Take the terms “husband” and “wife”, one isn’t better than the other. You get married and based on if your a man or a woman (two more terms), you fall into one category or the other. Is red better than blue, up better than down, right better than left, a sandwich better than a salad? No, we have terms we use to describe many different things without one being perceived as “less”. Is straight better than gay? Is gay better than straight? Are lesbians better than gay men? Or is not the other way around. There seems to be much greater acceptance in our society for lesbians that homosexual men, should we just start referring to all homosexuals as lesbians? If no, why not?
The hypocrisy I referred to is that if one believes that a homosexual is a completely natural state, every bit as wonderful and beautiful as traditional heterosexual pairings, then why not, in the spirit of gay pride, choose a term and own it. That would be the consistent thing to do, would it not? Seems so to me. And it would lead to a compromise where committed gay couples could get ALL the good stuff that married hetero couples get while preserving a word that describes a relationship that has been the cornerstone of Western civilization. But, it appear, “no”. gayness can’t be beautiful and glorious in its own right, so gays have to cling to the coattails of “marriage”. Seems weak and inconsistent to me.
Wearing shoes is the cornerstone of western civilization. As such, people that wear flip-flops shall be called, “Flop-persons”. I just don’t want to dilute the language.
There is no hypocrisy: The word “Marriage” means “two people who are in love getting legally joined with appropriate rights and privileges.” There is not one single useful part of the definition of marriage that requires the participants be of different genders.
Marriages don’t need to result in children, and we in fact have from time immemorial allowed heterosexual couples to get married who have no chance whatsoever of having children, so that’s out.
Yeah, it’s a condescending attitude, isn’t it? Like offering suffragettes ballots with pretty pink flowers on them, because women are just so special, yes you are, yes you are!
In addition to the myriad other questions that Magellan has run away from, I’ve never heard an answer to, “would it be okay if in the '60s they had decided to allow interracial marriages, but they had to be called, ‘Mixed Marriages’?”
Bob: “So are you married, Tim?”
Tim: “Actually, I’m Mixed-Married to a lovely mulatto named Sarah.”