Current Events — HabitableZone

Current Events » in reply to re: Flap in California, or Nader's announcement . . . ?

re: Flap
Fox — (archived)

The crux of the issue is that "marriage" is a religious term, and most religions have something against gays. Therefore, gay marriages should be opposed. It's purely religious.

"Union" is a political term, and most forward-thinking democracies should have no qualms about gay unions, after all, even homosexuals vote.

The main issue, though, is whether a "union" should hold the same legal rights as a "marriage". Dean says yes, and I agree.

So do I.

It's awfully damned silly for this issue to boil down to the semantics and, therefore, the legal implications of two words, but that's exactly what this is about. The problem, however - if one agrees with the premise you put forward, Dan - is that a Constitutional amendment to restrict the state of being married to heterosexual couples violates the establishment clause of the First Amendmant, by imposing a legislative restriction on a religious sacrament.

If all marriages without benefit of clergy - that is, performed legally by judges, ships' captains, and others with "powers vested" - had been called "civil unions" instead, there'd be no argument other than the obvious homophobic one. But they have, in our secular country, all the same legal rights and responsiblilites as marriages performed by clergy, and have gone by the same name.

Tom is probably right about the proposed Federal amendment having no better than a snowball's chance. That appears to be no barrier at all to state legislatures (including the one where I live) scrambling to enact their own "protection of marriage" amendments.

Make no mistake: none of these proposed amendments will "protect" Marriage as an institution. In point of fact, Marriage is not endangered in the slightest by more people wishing to enter it; if Marriage has ever been in any danger at all, it's been from individual marriages and the vagaries of human imperfection. That is why we have divorce law. Neither will those amendments prevent couples, same-sex and opposite-sex, from making and keeping lifelong committments "without benefit of clergy" (or justices of the peace), as they have for millennia.

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