I have been thinking about this a lot recently and I am still trying to get my head around why gay marriage is being pushed so hard instead of modifying civil union laws to make them exactly the same as marriage, (which it mostly is), bar the term "marriage".
I would fully support any changes to civil unions to give gay people the exact same rights as married people (i.e. adoption rights) but what is wrong with having a word that means heterosexual marriage and that has religious connotations? I think that not giving gay people the same rights as straight people is wrong but having a descriptive word for a particular type of union is not discriminatory.
A lot of gay people love to be different and go out of their way to express themselves and their sexuality in the media and in the public, gay pride parade, gay bars, gay saunas etc, so why do they want to be involved in a heterosexual, religiously-tied tradition that they know is going to ruffle a lot of feathers, especially those of other minorities in society?
They know their type of intimate relationship is different, just like a polygamist's one is - it's not about taking away rights or disrespecting the individual, it's about classifying the relationship. I would be really disappointed if this bill passes just because a) most mainstream people are too scared to be un-pc and offend people b) there is no valid explanation for changing the law aside from the descriptive term of marriage being able to be applied to homosexual civil unions.
And if people say it's just to get the word marriage to apply to everyone, then what on earth is the point? I feel there's no point to even get married because they might just change the law in a few years to make it redundant or come up with something else - all depends on what the minority of the hour feels like doing.
I would fully support any changes to civil unions to give gay people the exact same rights as married people (i.e. adoption rights) but what is wrong with having a word that means heterosexual marriage and that has religious connotations? I think that not giving gay people the same rights as straight people is wrong but having a descriptive word for a particular type of union is not discriminatory.
A lot of gay people love to be different and go out of their way to express themselves and their sexuality in the media and in the public, gay pride parade, gay bars, gay saunas etc, so why do they want to be involved in a heterosexual, religiously-tied tradition that they know is going to ruffle a lot of feathers, especially those of other minorities in society?
They know their type of intimate relationship is different, just like a polygamist's one is - it's not about taking away rights or disrespecting the individual, it's about classifying the relationship. I would be really disappointed if this bill passes just because a) most mainstream people are too scared to be un-pc and offend people b) there is no valid explanation for changing the law aside from the descriptive term of marriage being able to be applied to homosexual civil unions.
And if people say it's just to get the word marriage to apply to everyone, then what on earth is the point? I feel there's no point to even get married because they might just change the law in a few years to make it redundant or come up with something else - all depends on what the minority of the hour feels like doing.
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