I am not civil unioned. I am married.

[Luminous Animal]

I am sick and tired of folks advocating that we cede the definition of marriage to the fundies.

Fact: marriage is a civil contract. The fact that it can also be a religious rite does not negate that fact.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

1. I'm with you 100%...

Plus, there are religious groups, such as the Unitarians and the United Church of Christ, that do not exclude same sex spouses from their definition of marriage. Denying Gays and Lesbians the right to marry is a violation of the 1st Amendment.

[WhollyHeretic]

2. Well said. People cannot give into the bigots view.

My wife and I were married and there was no clergy and no mention of god. We are married and everyone deserves that right.

[Bryn]

5. I did, too. No Clergy, no god

to a Mexican man back in 1974 in California. We eventually got divorced, but the point is, we didn't have a church wedding. I didn't want one.

[Luminous Animal]

3. By the way..

I am a woman married to a man. To those who advocate restricting marriage to religious ceremonies, you are also advocating that every marriage not performed by clergy be relegated to that totally unromantic and unwieldy term, "civil union".

[Kitty Herder]

4. Thanks for the common sense. nt

[Breeze54]

6. Congratulations and totally agree.

I don't advocate marriage for anyone. Been there, done that and would never do it again but that's my choice.
If anyone chooses to be married, that should be their choice too and no one else should have any say about it!

It's none of their business!! :grr:

:hug:

[MercutioATC]

7. I believe the point is that we should ALL be "civil unioned"...

There are two components to the state of being "married", a legal component and a religious component.

Let them have "marriage". That can be the religious component. It has standing in whatever church one belongs to, but zero legal status.

A "civil union" would be the only process that grants any legal status...gay or straight.


We already do this. One must have a marriage certificate (civil union) before getting married (marriage).


It's just semantics.

[Gwendolyn]

9. We don't have civil unions. We have civil marriages. Not the same.

It's already been well explained on other threads.

[Luminous Animal]

10. There is only one legal component to being married...

and that is the one recognized by the state. Civil marriages are already the process that grants any legal status. There is no reason to redefine it. I will not cede my marriage to the bigots. It is not just semantics. Language is power.

[MercutioATC]

11. Well, that's the rocky path.

I'm telling you, the fundies are just hung up on the word "marriage". We could be getting a lot of rights for a lot of people if we let go of the semantics.

I'm NOT talking about a "separate but equal" thing here...just shifting the nomenclature a bit.

[Luminous Animal]

12. I will not cede my marriage to bigots.

If you look at the stats of prop 8, neither will youth. They voted in large numbers against it. It is a changing world.

[MercutioATC]

13. Are you fighting for a goal or just a word, though?

I completely agree that any "separate but equal" solution is unacceptable. If everybody has the same rules, though, what's the problem?

[Luminous Animal]

15. Why change the definition to please bigots? (n/t)

[Luminous Animal]

16. Would you have capitulated to the bigots

who advocated for miscegenation? Would have suggested that we know longer call marriage "marriage" because a bunch of bigots didn't believe that whites should marry blacks?

[MercutioATC]

17. Because there's an easier way to get the equality we want to see...

Look, I'm an air traffic controller. My job is to solve hundreds of problems a day in the easiest and most practical terms possible without sacrificing the goal. I'm handicapped in that I'm excessively result-oriented.

I know there is a lot of emotion tied to this...and that's not within my skill set. If my suggestion came across as insensitive, I apologize.

I still believe that redefining the terms for everybody would accomplish the goal without sacrificing the slightest degree of equality.

I'm scarily practical. I'm straight. I admit that maybe I don't have the ability to understand some of the collateral issues tied to this on a personal level...but I still think that there might be alternatives that would be more easily achieved that would grant equal rights to everybody.

[Pithlet]

20. If you're so result oriented, then I don't get why you don't get

that it's never going fly in a million years to get straight people to give up the term marriage. Never. I don't get why anyone ever suggests this crazy, ridiculous idea. Civil unions for everyone! Yeah, because no one gives a rip about the term marriage! It's just a word to middle America! That suggestion easily gets spun into 'They want to take away our marriage!" Dumb, dumb idea. Personally, I think nothing will kill the movement for civil rights for the GLBT community faster. If you aren't going to convince a bunch of bleeding heart liberal GLBT friendly atheists on DU, what makes you think you're going to convince millions of straight people across the political spectrum, many of whom are religious? And all for the cause of including GLBT people? If California is passing prop 8, then America at large isn't going to give up the term "Marriage" so that the GLBT community can have civil unions too. It's not going to happen. If you're excessively result oriented, I suggest dropping that as an alternative. This seems familiar. I think I've had this argument with you before, results oriented person. I'm puzzled as to why you're sticking to such an impossible goal, here.

I would give up the term marriage and say to heck with it, civil unions for all, if rest of America would go for it, and it meant extending equal rights to everyone. But I really, really don't think the rest of America would go for it. No way. I think they would extend marriage to the GLBT community first, well before they would give up Marriage. I really do. Because I do think that it will eventually happen. Over time, progress moves forward. We have our fits and our starts. We have our setbacks, like prop 8. But we keep fighting. And it will happen.

[Tigress DEM]

22. Maybe we should DEMAND the word MARRIAGE be removed & replaced with Civil UNIONS?

IF the term marriage creates inequality for individuals under the government's watch, maybe we should hit it from the separation of church and state angle.

NO MORE CIVIL MARRIAGE FOR ANYONE --- ALL RIGHTS CONFERRED TO INDIVIDUALS SEEKING THE LEGAL STATUS WITH THE STATE TO DETERMINE WHO THEIR FAMILY MEMBERS SHALL LEGALLY BE FROM A SPECIFIED DATE FORWARD WILL BE CIVIL UNIONS AND SOLELY A LEGAL CONTRACT.

If people want to get married, they go find a church and bring their civil union license to get it blessed or whatever, but it does not give them one ounce MORE legal standing than anyone who has a civil union.

Just BUST the STATES and FEDS out of the MARRIAGE business. IF they can't give it equally to everyone, NO ONE GETS IT.

The government ain't a church, so if MARRIAGE is a GOD thing, then the government has no business being involved in it.

I'm straight and if there was a group lawsuit demanding a certificate of civil union for every individual who believes the government needs to attend to legal status of contracts of committment and that churches need to attend to marriage rites and that the two should be forever separated in order to become equal, I'd swap my marriage liscense and get my church to do a simple blessing of my union.

I'd give up the word if it would create a movement to get equal rights for people in the GLBT community.

[Pithlet]

23. Okay. Try that. And set the fight for civil rights for the GLBT community even further back.

It's insane. That's what it is. Of course YOU would give it up. So would I. Because WE'RE on their side. But when these bigots won't even give them civil unions, what makes you think they're going to give up the word marriage? What makes you think if go all out medieval on their asses and completely destroy marriage in retaliation that that's suddenly going to make them sympathetic and say "Oh, we were wrong! Equal rights for everyone then!" No. In their twisted warped minds it's just going to reaffirm what they've thought all along. "See, we were right! They were out to destroy marriage all along!" No. I'm sorry, but it's nuts. People aren't going to give up marriage. It's not happening. If prop 8 can't even pass in CA, there's no way we're wresting marriage from everyone in America, anyway, so it's moot.

[Gwendolyn]

25. It can't happen anyway. It's ridiculous from a legal POV.

[Pithlet]

27. Yep. It's ridiculous forward, backward, and upside down.

I'm glad it can never happen. I just have to get my rant out against it every once in a while. I'm amazed at how often I see it suggested. Marriage is a civil rights issue. That's how we frame it and that's how we keep hammering at it.

[Gwendolyn]

29. There's that aspect. Not to mention every state having to negotiate what

"civil union" means as opposed to marriage. And then we'd be illegal in every country in the world anyway since they all work off the marriage concept. It's just a morass of legal complications that would tie up the courts for the next thousand years, and marginalize us as some bizarre backwoods country in the eyes of the rest of the world. :crazy:

[Pithlet]

30. Or maybe you wouldn't love your partner as much.

Come on. Just admit it. It's all about the word. Our arguments have all just been blah, blah, blah... :silly:

[Gwendolyn]

32. "Will you union me" definitely doesn't have the same ring to it.

:)

Then I guess you have to get rid of words like husband and wife too. Yeah, it'd go over rill big!

[gollygee]

37. If we have the power to DEMAND that, we have the power to just DEMAND same-sex couples can marry

But it doesn't work that way.

You take away the word "marriage", then you tell the fundies that indeed, gay people really did destroy marriage, just like they thought would happen. And the whole problem gets a lot bigger.

And proposal 8 ALMOST DIDN'T PASS. It wasn't like it passed by a landslide. There isn't a whole lot of work to be done to get same-sex marriage in this country. It just takes a little more PR. It will be far easier to convince a small percentage of people to change how they see things than to completely take away a word they obviously care a lot about.

[Ms. Toad]

42. Marriage is NOT exclusively a god thing

it is also legal status which is recognized not only within the state that created it, but nationally and internationally through decades of litigation and legislation that created the intricate interrelationships that mandate nearly universal recognition and respect.

Creating a separate Civil Union status for everyone deprives every couple of the right to have their family relationships recognized anywhere but within the borders of the state that created it or within the United States (IF you succeed in getting 50 states to adopt it AND you succeed in gaining interstate recognition of each other's civil unions). As European countries which have gone that route well know, civil unions (or registered partnerships) enjoy no reciprocal recognition except by mutual consent.

[Gwendolyn]

44. Thank you.

[justiceischeap]

35. Actually there are over a 1000 legal benefits to being "married."

Which is why it's so important for the gay community to be married. In CA, their law states that churches don't have to "marry" gays if they don't want to. They did everything they could to keep the religious aspect out of it.

[jeepnstein]

38. School me a bit.

I'm serious, not just looking for an argument. I've never heard anyone explain the difference between a civil union and a traditional Church wedding. As far as I can tell the only thing getting married in a Church indicates is a couple's willingness to submit to the authority of the Church.

[justiceischeap]

39. Marriage v. Civil Unions -- The Movie

From Factcheck.org http://www.factcheck.org/what_is_a_civil_union.html

We find three main differences between civil unions and marriage as it's traditionally viewed:

• The right to federal benefits. States that allow some type of same-sex union are able to grant only state rights. The Defense of Marriage Act passed in 1996 prohibits same-sex couples from receiving federal marriage rights and benefits.


• Portability. Because civil unions are not recognized by all states, such agreements are not always valid when couples cross state lines.


• Terminology. "Marriage" is a term that conveys societal and cultural meaning, important to both gay rights activists and those who don't believe gays should marry.

The fundies are saying marriage is a religious aspect but in history, prior to Christ, God and all the evilness that makes up modern Christianity, gay folks got married. As the Church often does, they took that right away from perfectly happy people. Then laws followed. They use the argument that gay marriages will hurt the sanctity of marriage and conveniently forget that straight marriages are rife with divorce, abuse and adultery.

[jeepnstein]

41. Thanks!

[ContinentalOp]

8. Yep, if marriage is religious then I want a divorce.

To tie marriage to religion is an insult to married atheists.

[Book Lover]

18. This married atheist thanks you (nm)

[Withywindle]

14. My parents were married by a judge in a courthouse. Just celebrated their 40th anniversary.

Not in a church. No clergy involved. They don't go to church. EVER. They're atheists.

They're no civil-unioned either, they're MARRIED. Because that's what the law says.

And it's not a "state's rights" issue either; they're still married if they travel to KY, CA, AK, HI, ME, TX, NY, WY....and China and England and Brazil and Australia and Liberia and Liechtenstein and....


(I love Obama, but I want to slap him silly for that "matter for the states" thing. He should know better - his own parents' marriage was illegal in many states at the time he was born.)

[Pithlet]

19. This can't be said enough.

Marriage for all. Don't let the bigots have it. It was never theirs to begin with.

[Tigress DEM]

21. But is the "word" so important that we must beat it like a dead horse and lose the real war?

I KNOW it doesn't hurt me one single bit if a gay person is married.

And I understand that word carries a lot of impact to both sides. I don't say the word should be "ceded" permanently, but sometimes a strategic retreat is in order to get the real goal accomplished.

I FEEL for people who suffer the indignity of being only able to get a civil union or not even that in some states, but I BLEED tears of rage and helplessness when homophobes are allowed to beat someone to death and get away with it.

I would LOVE for the world to be a more understanding place, but it isn't - yet.

YET it is a country where the rule of law is coming back and I want justice first, polish it up later. I want laws that prevent another loved one from dying without the person they cherish most in their hospital room.

I want laws that let loving, caring people be parents without discrimination.

They can call it Homer Simpson for all I care, I just want to see equality in legal fact. I want the mayhem and the madness to stop. If the fundies are so damn stupid that they will give up everything to keep that word, isn't it really a simple choice?

[Pithlet]

24. But holding on to the word doesn't lose the war.

Holding on to the word and calling it the civil rights issue that it is is what wins the war. It worked for interracial marriage. It will work for the GLBT community. That's the bottom line. It's not an easy war. It's a war of lots of little battles. It's better than destroying marriage to appease the bigots. It's better than separate but equal. And it's better than ridiculous schemes like "civil unions for everyone" that no one will ever go for.

[justiceischeap]

36. That's the easy way and it reminds us gay folk of the following

Separate but equal is a set phrase that systems of segregation giving different "colored only" facilities or services with the declaration that the quality of each group's public facilities remain equal.


There are times where I wholeheartedly agree with you. If they have to call it civil unions to pass then so be it. We can change the language later. But keep this in mind. Florida just banned not only gay "marriage" but civil unions and domestic partnerships. That's right, our fellow American citizens in Florida voted against anything that we make us legally bound.

[Ms. Toad]

47. It is not the word

It is the statutes and case law throughout the world which define "marriage," but which DO NOT define "civil unions.

Each state has its own statute defining "marriage." Very few have statutes defining "civil unions," and still fewer countries have statutes defining civil unions. Fewer still have any statutes or case law granting recognition of "civil unions" created in another state or country - and most important within the united states - even granting the thousand plus federal rights associated with marriages but not with civil unions.

It took literally decades to work out the interrelationship between marriage statutes and case law in one political subdivision and another. Approximately half of every domestic relations textbook, and half of every estates and trusts textbook is devoted to studying the cases that sorted out when and how marriages and divorces among the various states or countries should be treated. Switching to "civil unions" would require not only creating the authorizing statutes - but relitigating all those cases, because the standard legal presumption is that if you call something by a different name, you intended it to be different (otherwise, why bother using different terminology).

[endthewar]

26. Your wording is duly noted.

Riddle me this. Do you love your spouse any more or less depending on what it's called?

[Pithlet]

28. You got us.

We only love our partners if we call it marriage. How did you figure it out so quickly? Thread over. Everybody can go to bed now.

[Gwendolyn]

40. People who don't give a dollop of doo what the implications of the word marriage means...

...pretty much aren't getting married anyway. It's a wash on a global basis, whether or not one is liberal, rethug, or otherwise. For people who do care, regardless of one's race or creed or sexual temptation, it is. Forcing people to behave beige is gross, even when dems do it. No European would even be entertaining this convo. It's Puritan dna residual all the way.

[Dark]

31. Amen. k&R

nt

[RhodaGrits]

33. What a mess.

Prior to this thread, I would have said that I believed that marriage is a religious sacrament and that the government should get out of religion completely and issue only licenses for civil unions and then you could get "married" in whatever service you wanted to acknowledge, proclaim and celebrate that union. But I really hadn't considered that atheists are certainly entitled to be "married" with all the weight that that word carries. <sigh>

One of my best friends is in the midst of one of the messiest, nastiest divorces I've ever seen - hers was the first lesbian marriage ceremony that I attended. A divorced straight friend had said for years that gays should have the same right to get divorced and this is a perfect example of the downside to this. The attorneys are banking big hourlies and it's awful to watch.

[Mari333]

34. yes we can...some of us.

[csziggy]

43. While I use the phrase "civil union" to shock our fundie relatives

I call my relationship a "marriage" in regular conversation. Either way, I don't care what it is called as long as civil rights are not taken away from one part of the population because of religious prejudices.

And I do think you have a point - calling one form of commitment "civil unions" while the majority gets to have "marriages" is back to "separate but equal." Just another way to abridge civil rights.

[noel711]

45. You are absolutely right. A marriage IS a civil contract...

Most fundies are stupid.They believe whatever pap they're given.

Until the middle ages, marriages were a civil contract
that bound two people together as a political, economic bond.
It was wealthy people who controlled marriages,
in efforts to keep political alliances, wealth, and
control in their hands.

For peasants, a wedding simply was an agreement between
families; no church was necessary.

The Roman Catholic church decided that they needed an iron
in that fire, and declared marriage a sacrament, i.e.,
a rite that declared marriage was necessary for salvation.
(stop laughing now.. it's true).
Too many young people were 'declaring' themselves married,
(which legally, is all you need to do to be bound by law)..
the church was losing out financially by not regimenting these
weddings, thus... if you're married in the eyes of the church,
you get a passport to paradise. Doncha love it?

But even then wedding were conducted by the priests at the front
door of the church; only the rich could affort the expense of a huge
church processional wedding, etc.

The reformation made weddings a civil affair, no salvation tied up in
it. But somehow, the public perception of weddings is still all tied
up in Jesus. What a travesty.

Martin Luther, that radical reformer, stated something to the
effect of: A wedding is a civil affair, instituted by God for the
good order of society, i.e. a wedding is a legal committment by
two people to form a family. Family is necessary, the crucible
of society for the protection and nurture of individuals,
and the innocents.

Using this definition, I think we can agree that civil unions
are for everyone; our country needs to follow the example of
Europe...

By the way, I am clergy. These arguments about the
sanctity of marriage get in my craw. I've seen man/woman
marriages that were foul, destructive, perverse and debasing.
How is that holy?

[Gwendolyn]

46. Bwahahah... yes, we shall all now follow the example of Europe

and you...



:rofl:

[noel711]

48. I don't understand your laughter, Gwen...

I was agreeing with OP, the history of marriage
and religion is a short one.

Agree with Europe?

They took the legality of marriage out of the church.