Here's the deal, whether or one supports, ignores, or abhors homosexuality is completely immaterial to the conversation. It is as pure a matter of equal protection under the law as one could possibly imagine. If two (or more, for that matter) people want to more or less permanently associate in such a way that the state grants them a status that in some way blurs their legal persons into a whole, then the sex of the people shouldn't matter any more than their race, age, weight, or religion. Unless we're really pushing to go back to the bad old days when miscegenation was a word most people understood, then we need to lay off this whole agrument.
Another thing that I ran across today, in a letter read on NPR, was a good question, "What exactly does the Defense of Marriage ammendment defend marriage against? That is, what damage to marriage could homosexuals do that hasn't already been done by heterosexuals?" That's the other thing that really gets me about this. What harm is there in this? Who's hurt? Where's there an aggrieved party?
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Originally posted by tecoyah
So what if we had two types of marriage? One "under god" and one "under law", with the same rights. In this way the christians can still feel superior, and every citizen of this country can gain entitlement to the rights the deserve as humans in a society.
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Actually, we do. The States grant the right to issue licenses to the clergy as if they were agents of the state, but the license is as valid from the county clerk as it is from the archbishop. So the license is the civil union, and any religious ceremony recognizing the people joined in that union is something else again, and from a legal standpoint, strictly optional. That's another reason why I just don't get what the fuss is about, both about gay marriage, and about calling it a civil union. I hardly thing separate but equal applies here. If it walks like a duck, and talks like a duck, then Cheney and Scalia are just as likely to shoot at it no matter what you call it.