[Will]

Phoenix-D said:

Bull. A substantial portion of the anti-gay marriage amendments also Banned civil unions, which IS saying exactly that.

That and we've tried the "seperate but equal" thing before, remember?

I just wanted to belatedly ditto this. While it is only my personal perspective, my experiences living in a conservative rural area (rural Pennsylvania) and a moderately progressive urban sprawl (Los Angeles) tell me that most of the anti-gay-marriage (or 'pro-family', or 'defenders-of-marriage') activists are simply expressing homophobia, only veiled to varying degrees. Some seem legitimate to people who only follow the quick sound-bytes on the news, while others show the blatant absurdity of the position (IMHO). In California, the "activists" aren't really all that active (in fact, the College Republicans here have the very odd platform of being "pro-choice, pro-environment, pro-gun control", which sounds awfully like a Democrat group... but this is California). The ones who say they oppose gay marriage generally have never met or talked to a homosexual person. Or, more likely, they were never aware of it if they did, so it's mostly an ignorance problem from that viewpoint. In Pennsylvania, on the other hand, I think it's ignorance combined with outright stubborness and fear. There were actually op-ed pieces in the local paper that seriously put forth the argument that the local theatre should be shut down for putting on a production of The Birdcage, before the "gay disease" infected the entire town. Then again, this is in an area of Pennsylvania where people fly the Confederate flag, and there is still blatant and obvious racism.

What I would like is for just ONE person to give me solid, credible arguments for why two people, regardless of their sex, should not be able to get married. I sometimes wonder: Do they not realize that this sounds exactly like the laws banning blacks from marrying whites? There are arguments based on religion, but there is this little bit in the Constitution that says "Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof", and that's in there for a good reason. The State has no business in the Church, and vice versa. And it must be remembered that marriage was co-opted into religion, and the current religious significance is just the incorporation of very old secular (or pagan, depending on your viewpoint) traditions. In the real world marriage is the legal binding of two people, and any religious attachment to the term is merely coincidental. That little clause of the First Amendment does not prohibit a couple from having a religious ceremony to go along with it, either.

But, with all that, I do support civil unions. On the grounds that a little progress is better than none. The entire civil rights and women's rights movements were and are based on small steps toward the ideal. There are some people who just won't change their mind on certain subjects (such as blacks, jews, women, gays, etc being somehow inferior). Anything that makes the transition easier, like using a different word for the same idea, is a good thing.