(no subject)

[desh]

Can anyone offer a compelling argument as to why same-sex marriage should be legal everywhere in the US? Specifically, why that would be superior, in the long run, to "marriage" being removed as a legal term for everyone, and replaced by civil unions for any two un-unioned consenting adults (of whatever sex/gender)? Because I definitely prefer the latter, but I'm not sure if there are good reasons I haven't thought of as to why same-sex marriage is actually better.

(Leaving aside the question of multiple partners for now, since it raises a different set of issues...)

Comments

[smarriveurr.livejournal.com]

I think in part, we have a strong tradition and legal precedent for marriage that we'd have to carry over to civil unions (and you know my opinions on law, bureaucracy, etc). For another part, as you just might have heard, there's already yahoos in California staging protests over the fact that their legal documents didn't say bride and groom. Imagine if it didn't say they were getting married. Basically, I think any attempt to turn the government aspect of "marriage" into something less loaded as a civil contract will get all the opposition that recognizing "gay marriage" does, and possibly then some.

By the same token, I'm not sure it would be satisfactory for many gay couples either, because it still gives unnecessary weight to the "well, you're not really married" bullshit, even if "marriage" is a religious rather than secular idea. If you want to get married, you want to get married, you don't want to get "civilly unionized" or whatever ugly verb-form we can come up with (another stumbling block, getting the language to stick), and you don't want to lend weight to the annoying argument that "the gays are trying to take this away from us." Attempting to entirely remove "marriage" as a government institution would throw rocket fuel on that fire. Then it would merit an actual, literal "defense of marriage" framing, instead of a spurious and poorly justified one.

Now, that's not to say I don't think it has a lot of merit on paper. It does simplify the debate if we can move the model away from the loaded word to a less loaded one. It further limits governmental power over private life. I'm just not sure it's a practical solution.

Even absent the political battles, I'm torn. On the one hand, I think removing legal recognition of "marriage" as such is a good idea, as outlined above. On the other, the "conservative" (hehehe) side of me says "Look, marriage is an institution we know, it has precedent, it has a weight. Why screw around with inventing a replacement for something that we already know how to deal with when we can instead simply broaden the definition to a logical conclusion?"

On still another hand, the side of me that realizes it's 1am thinks I'm babbling and not adding anything useful to the discussion anymore. So that's enough of that.

TL;DR: LOL, I DUNNO.