Last night Zach and I were talking about this whole issue of gay marriage. It seems those against it seem to be ok with giving all the same rights under the law, as "civil unions." Now, this seems rather silly to me, and if I were gay and told I couldn't "marry" the love of my life I'd be damn well pissed. To me, there's a huge difference between being able to say "I'm married" and "I'm... " wait, what's the proper term anyway? Civilly unified? Unified civilly? Joined by civil union? Which just kinda helps emphasize my point.
At the same time, though (and by this I don't mean to in any way belittle the fight of homosexuals to gain full access to this right), it all kinda comes down to semantics. And if it were me, I wouldn't bother using the "right terminology." There might be a piece of paper that says "Civil Union" on it rather than "Marriage License" but I'd still say it was my
wedding. That this is my
spouse/wife/husband, that we are
married, etc. Really. the only people using the term "civil union" would be those against gay marriage.
The biggest battle is making sure that all the legal protections ARE the same, across the nation. That goes not only for things like property rights, tax breaks, being able to stay at the hospital with your spouse, etc, but also for adoption, parental rights, etc should the couple have children. EVERYTHING needs to be equal, in every state. After that we could just let the anti-gay marriage lobbies think they won, and just use the word "marriage," anyway. The anti-gay marriage laws in the books would just become obsolete, a thing for random trivia emails, as everyone would be used to just accepting gay marriage as a fact of life. The "civil union" part of it would be a mere technicality.
Comments (9)
In the end, it does all kind of come down to semantics. But, for some gay people, they don't want there to be any difference, if even only in the name, because they want to be considered a normal person like you or I, which they are. Should they allow to be granted civil unions and work for them to be coined marriages in the future? Yes, I believe so. Things will go one step at a time. Nice post!
The danger is the concept of "separate but equal". The reason we need to fight for the same rights, CALLED the same thing, for everyone, is because separate but equal is anything BUT equal. It's a second tier, a lower level, a not "normal", not "mainstream".
Personally, I think we should separate the concept of marriage away from the legal contract. Return marriage, and all the "sanctity" that goes with it, to the religious traditions in which it emerged, and make the legal contract something very, very separate. [Read my most recent post about the sanctity of marriage.] Thus people who want to get "married" because they have a religious tradition that supports it can, and those who just want the legal rights and protections and access to health care and don't have a religious tradition to follow can get them. We can coin a new word for the legal contract that doesn't sound so harsh (we are "legally contracted", meh, not romantic at all. But then, in many religions, "marriage" is not based on romance either.) One key element of this concept is that when a couple gets "married" in their religion, they still have to go through the same process to have it recognized legally as people who don't get "married".
I call that "separation of church and state".
BWAH! I just went to dictionary.com to make sure I spelled separate correctly, and got two ads for divorce lawyers.
it's a tough topic but I'm all for allowing gays the same privileges and rights as those of us who are not gay.
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The problem is that marriage is both a religious and civil concept, and the intertwining guarantees controversy. The fix is to separate the religious and civil components of marriage for all people, gay or straight. Thus, in the eyes of the government, *all* marriages should be called civil unions. The government is a civil institution, and this is one more area where we should be keeping church and state distinctly apart. All of the legal protections and rights of marriage for any couple should be encapsulated in a civil union, and the government should become blind to anything but that.
If you want access to the legal rights of a unified household, go to the government and get your civil union license. If you want to be married, go to whatever church you prefer and have a religious ceremony. This is the only solution that will really fix the problem entirely, but it requires us to admit and accept that our Western government institutions are not nearly so far from a Christian moral basis as we sometimes like to pretend. That is a problem that we need to continually root out and redress in these modern times.
looks like my hubby beat me to comment. LOL.
*wave*
I'm with kadair. Calling it something else makes it something else, and makes gay people second-class citizens. "Separate but equal" is not equal - sure, they could say the kids at the black schools would have the same supplies, the same equipment, the same desks, the teachers and administrators would be trained the same way... but we all know that was not "the same."
Perhaps if straight couples started referring to their unions as civil unions, kind of like what nezroy said, then we'd change the meanings of the words, and civil unions would be an acceptable option for gay couples.
So, do we fight for marriage for everyone, or civil unions for everyone?
@kadair - @nezroy - @ReinaCristina - I agree 100%, that obviously would be the SMART way of doing things. However we as a country seem averse to that for some reason. The funny thing is, it's not even "separate" really. I think I blogged about this a while ago, but my sister (Jenny) came up with this great analogy where it's not even that we're asking gays to drink form a separate water fountain. Instead they can go to the same one, they just have to call it a different name. Which just shows incredibly silly this whole thing is. If we had true separation of church and state this wouldn't even be an issue.
@mightymarce - The thing is, in this case, the water fountain is an idea, not a physical thing or place. And that idea is expressed with words. If we give it a different word, we are making it a different thing - Juliet was wrong, there is A LOT in a name. When we call it a different thing, we are sending them to a different water fountain.