You make an excellent point, and in an ideal world, I actually agree with you that marriage should be entirely a religious term defined on a church-by-church basis as it sees fit, with a separate system of civil unions that applies regardless of orientation. However, attempting to divorce the religious marriage from the civil union will again be seen as "redefining marriage", and so it will never pass. In fact, it would be faced with an even bigger backlash, as we would then, in a very real way, be "attacking other people's marriages." So that would never pass muster.
The bottom line is that we're not trying to redefine religious marriage anyway. The equality we seek only extends to the civil protections of marriage. The problem is that most people can't make the distinction, which reinforces my previous point that we'd never reach a point of separation between religious and civil marriage. So attempting to get civil unions everywhere would in effect leave us in a limbo where we have marriages for straight people and civil unions for gay people, and no way to rectify them. They'd be separate but equal. And we all know how well separate but equal works. David Churvis -----Original Message----- From: Sam [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, November 17, 2008 1:56 PM To: cf-community Subject: Re: the list That's the battle you need to fight first, equality through civil unions. It'll be much easier to win. Once all or most States have it, the next battle will be easier. That's my point about not being anti-gay. I'd say anyone against equality under civil union is anti-gay, and that'll weed them out from the religious or other issues. The marriage term scares people more. Forced education, as you mentioned, seems to get traction with changing marriage, but not with civil unions. I vaguely remember a law last year or two in California about banning the mention of a mother and father as a family in all school books. Brothers and sisters couldn't be mentioned unless "other" was also included. I don't know how true it is or if it's just a worse case scenario about the law but it's not helping the cause. On Mon, Nov 17, 2008 at 10:32 AM, David Churvis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > And I know you don't consider someone who's against same-sex marriage > anti-gay, but I think that's due in large part to the fact that you're not > gay with a partner that you can't marry. I'm going to Boston (hopefully) > next year to marry the man with whom I've built a life. That trip's going > to cost a good amount of money. And then we're going to come back home and > have the big party surrounded by family and friends and love... and the > marriage license won't be worth the paper it's printed on because Georgia > doesn't allow same-sex marriage. In addition, Georgia's amendment went one > step further and said that no relationship between two people of the same > sex can even have any of the same rights as marriage, even if it's legal in > another state. So for instance, if he gets sick, there's no guarantee that > I'll be able to see him in the hospital. I'm certainly not a member of his > family. And that's just one of more than a thousand rights we are denied as > a gay couple. > > So maybe it's not anti-gay in intention, but it's sure as hell anti-gay in > effect. > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Adobe® ColdFusion® 8 software 8 is the most important and dramatic release to date Get the Free Trial http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;207172674;29440083;f Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/message.cfm/messageid:280581 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.5
