07-10-2010, 05:12 AM
Hi Kalama,
You have a talent for injecting red herring arguments (intended or otherwise...) into a fairly straight-forward (you should pardon the term) discussion. Civil unions is all about striving towards parity with the legal (and again, I stress the word "legal") benefits conferred by the government on married couples. When I say "couples" I mean "couples" as in two people (the primary definition of the word "couple"). Now if the government decides to allow three or more people to legally marry each other, we'll press for equality there too, but I don't see that happening with or without civil unions.
I'm not sure what you mean by granting rights at birth...how would that work in my hospital visitation example? I guess we could come at your outcome another way: not granting any automatic legal benefits to any marriage (gay or straight). In that case, we would have equity and there would be no legal need for civil unions and/or marriage (although couples could engage in the practices if they wanted the social recognition of their relationship). Under this scenario, all individuals could meet with lawyers to set up documented directives for medical visitations, benefits designations, inheritance, etc. -- just like Don and I and other gay couples have to do now (but hopefully without the very real threat of legal challenges from disgruntled family members and others that gays currently face <note: for the record Don's family and mine could not be more supportive of our relationship>)
And as for the term "marriage", I don't get as hung up on that as some people. If you want to call gay unions by a different term than straight unions, I can live with that as long as the legal benefits are the same. But many more strident than I would argue that any difference in terms denotes a difference of importance. Once I win the benefits battle, then I might take up the semantics battle. First things first...
Aloha
You have a talent for injecting red herring arguments (intended or otherwise...) into a fairly straight-forward (you should pardon the term) discussion. Civil unions is all about striving towards parity with the legal (and again, I stress the word "legal") benefits conferred by the government on married couples. When I say "couples" I mean "couples" as in two people (the primary definition of the word "couple"). Now if the government decides to allow three or more people to legally marry each other, we'll press for equality there too, but I don't see that happening with or without civil unions.
I'm not sure what you mean by granting rights at birth...how would that work in my hospital visitation example? I guess we could come at your outcome another way: not granting any automatic legal benefits to any marriage (gay or straight). In that case, we would have equity and there would be no legal need for civil unions and/or marriage (although couples could engage in the practices if they wanted the social recognition of their relationship). Under this scenario, all individuals could meet with lawyers to set up documented directives for medical visitations, benefits designations, inheritance, etc. -- just like Don and I and other gay couples have to do now (but hopefully without the very real threat of legal challenges from disgruntled family members and others that gays currently face <note: for the record Don's family and mine could not be more supportive of our relationship>)
And as for the term "marriage", I don't get as hung up on that as some people. If you want to call gay unions by a different term than straight unions, I can live with that as long as the legal benefits are the same. But many more strident than I would argue that any difference in terms denotes a difference of importance. Once I win the benefits battle, then I might take up the semantics battle. First things first...
Aloha