On Civil Unions

[dsrtao]

The Democratic contenders for the presidency almost all agreed that having civil unions with all the rights and benefits of marriage, but not the same name, was an appropriate solution.

Each and every one of them is a shameful coward.

Henceforth, all Americans with a skin albedo less than an amount to be determined later will have the name of their citizenship changed to "Black Citizen". After all, as long as they have the same rights and privileges, it doesn't matter what they're called.

All Americans with pronounced sinister tendencies will be re-classified as "Left-Handed Citizens".

And if your BMI is greater than 30, all your official papers will have the title "Obese Citizen" appended. You may go to a court with notarized affidavits from two physicians at least one year apart certifying a lower BMI in order to be reinstated as a "Real Citizen", but why would you want that?

And the citizenship of anyone holding an elected office will be changed to "Noble Citizen".

Comments

[tpau]

can they all jsut make everythgn be a civil union? marriage is religious, what the hell si the government doign with it anyway...

[sareena99.livejournal.com]

You took the words out of my mouth!

For legal purposes, let's have something called a *civil union* for everybody. Religious and other cultural ceremonies should be separate and optional.

[cvirtue.livejournal.com]

I agree.

I think that the thing should be a subset of contract law, really; people get married without realizing all the things they are signing up for. A real contract would solve a lot of that issue.

[hel_ana]

If you look at the English common law tradition (which is largely where both canada and the US get their legal tradition), going back to the germanic law codes, government *started* it, and religion horned in on it in roughly the 12th century.

It's the germanic law codes of the 6-9th centuries that spell out what the conditions (dowry, etc) for contracting a legal marriage are, not the church.

Now, I recognize that in other cultural contexts this isn't the case (Judaism springs immediately to mind). But accepting the right's frame (to go all George Lakoff on everybody) that marriage is inherently religious is to give ground to them.

[mangosteen]

I completely agree.... except for one thing.

To go the "get government out of the marriage business" route allows for a "the perfect is the enemy of the good" strategy. This is the tack that several enemies of same-sex civil unions use in order to try to put off the decision forever, while still looking like they're being completely even-handed and fair about it. I am neither fooled, nor impressed.

While I agree that that is where we should be eventually, the way to get there is to force the issue through as "marriage", and then let the semantics happen later.

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

People who oppose equal and equivalent gay marriage make up all sorts of smokescreens to hide the fact that They Don't Like Fucking Queers. Everything else is bullshit. Every time I discover a new rationale it succumbs to that same simple analysis.

Sorry for the profanity, but it's part of the slogan, and reveals the deep emotional irrationality that underpins such hateful initiatives.

Call it marriage. Everyone knows what a marriage is. Everyone is entitled to one.

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

I disagree with your capitalization statement - although I happen to strongly support "Marriage For All".

There are a fairly decent number of people who don't hate Queers, but feel that marriage, as ingrained in our current culture (which is not 6th Century Germany or 1 BCE Rome) is something that is purely and canonically a mixed gender plus child construction. True, true, there are many exceptions to the children part.

But they believe that what they have is important, and they fear change.

They do find it hard to argue against the change - and the change is more fear and ignorance-laden than based upon proof or knowledge.

Convincing this large middle ground is impossible, if you tell them they hate. They don't. They fear the loss of damage to a major portion of the fabric of society.

The solution to those people, is education. Let them see their neighbors, who have lived together for 20 years (and maybe raised children) as human beings. Let them see that nations with equivalence laws or universal marriage have lower divorce rates, and healthy children.

Yes: there are many people who either hate gays, or think of them as lesser people to be especially nice to: only to a certain point. But that's not all of the opposition.

As for dsrtao, you have to see why it is that someone trying to garner wide support, will always straddle the middle of a contentious issue, if they can.

This does not make them coward, it merely fails to make them champions of a cause that you and I share. And your illustration, while interesting, talks about taking away equivalence rights, which is not the same as extending them.

[ladymacgregor.livejournal.com]

I read a lovely story in The Boston Globe on the day that gay marriage was upheld (a couple of months ago?). The state reps knew the eyes of the country were on them, and really spent time with their constituents trying to Do The Right Thing - as they, or their constituents, defined it. One rep said that a grandmother-type had told him originally that she was Against Gay Marriage. But when this vote came around, she told him she had now changed her mind. "A very nice couple has moved in next to me - two men, who have married, and their son," she told him. "They mow my lawn for me. And if their marriage is declared invalid, they'll move out of the state. And who will mow my lawn for me then?" (The rep voted to uphold gay marriage.)

One of the really interesting effects of this law is that it has allowed the straight citizenry to actually meet the less-flamboyant gays. If your only exposure to gays is the Pride Parade (not that I've looked recently, but that used to be the absolute weirdest part of gay culture - maribou boas, leather, etc.), then you might be worried about gays in general. If you find out that the nice man two houses down, who is a lawyer in a big Boston law firm, dresses conservatively, works hard, keeps up his house, and even mows YOUR lawn, is gay, you begin to look at things differently. That's not nearly as frightening to the "average citizen," and it seems much more reasonable that that nice man would want to be married.

No, I'm not saying that "all gays should have to be boring to be accepted." But the out-there people, whether gay, straight, or other, have always made mainstream people nervous. It's nice for them to see that there are mainstream gay people, too, just trying to get along.