May 25, 2000
3:10 PM Subscribe
If it looks like a duck and it smells like a duck and it sounds like a duck it's a . . . . Holy Union?
Wow! "Governental" and "regulartions"? I've got to lay off the gin and tonics!
posted by grumblebee at 4:09 PM on May 25, 2000
posted by grumblebee at 4:09 PM on May 25, 2000
I think this whole "ok, we'll allow gay marriage, but we'll call it something else" scam is rather clever. Enough states have already passed "We won't recognize gay marriage even if everyone else decides to" laws that actually legalizing marriage at this point would be rather difficult. You'd only be married in half the country, and as the anti-gay-marriage folks don't seem to have had much trouble passing these laws so far the portion of the country in which one *could* be legally married is likely to shrink.
So the Vermont solution is brilliant. Create a parallel institution identical to marriage in all aspects but name and the genders of the participants involved. You can convince the conservatives that it's a necessary compromise, that really, the Sanctity of Marriage (ahem) has been Preserved, and then let all the couples who've been waiting to get hitched go to it. And there's nothing these backwards anti-gay-marriage laws can do about it, because it's not actually marriage.
If the churches keep jumping on this bandwagon there'll be almost nothing to stop it. Twenty years from now there'll be thousands of might-as-well-be-married gay couples all over the place, civilisation will not have collapsed, and all remaining arguments against gay marriage will have been reduced to the laughable archaisms they really are.
Go, PCUSA, go!
-Mars
posted by Mars Saxman at 8:39 AM on May 26, 2000
So the Vermont solution is brilliant. Create a parallel institution identical to marriage in all aspects but name and the genders of the participants involved. You can convince the conservatives that it's a necessary compromise, that really, the Sanctity of Marriage (ahem) has been Preserved, and then let all the couples who've been waiting to get hitched go to it. And there's nothing these backwards anti-gay-marriage laws can do about it, because it's not actually marriage.
If the churches keep jumping on this bandwagon there'll be almost nothing to stop it. Twenty years from now there'll be thousands of might-as-well-be-married gay couples all over the place, civilisation will not have collapsed, and all remaining arguments against gay marriage will have been reduced to the laughable archaisms they really are.
Go, PCUSA, go!
-Mars
posted by Mars Saxman at 8:39 AM on May 26, 2000
« Older Maybe there are some things you can't sell... | There, now, don't you feel safer? Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
If you believe in gay rights, is this good or bad? On the one hand, it seems to be a step forward. On the other had, marriage for straights and "holy unions" for gays reminds me a lot of white drinking fountains and black drinking fountains.
There's also a real nuts and bolts issue. Governental and corporate regulartions regarding spouses (i.e. health insurance) may not always extend to partners in a "holy union."
posted by grumblebee at 4:08 PM on May 25, 2000