Quote:I agree with much of what TJBender has posted, and I think he kind of understands my point of view.

 

Consider this.  Why was the whole issue of gay marriage started in the first place?  It was because same-sex couples wanted the same legal benefits of traditional couples.  For example, they wanted to be able to file taxes as "married", wanted to have spouse survival benefits in the event of the death of their spouse, wanted to be able to purchase insurance as a family rather than individuals, etc.  I personally see nothing wrong with that and support it as most reasonable people do.

 

The problem is that there are many people who consider marriage as a religious union between a man and a woman.  All that I'm saying is that a reasonable solution to avoid problems such as this lady that is the subject of this thread, is to change the legal term to a civil union on legal documents.  After doing that, then anyone entering a civil union can call their union whatever they wish, and if they choose to call it a marriage they are certainly free to do so.

 

Here is another way to look at it.  The civil union is the legal binding contract between two people.  A marriage or wedding is the ceremony celebrating and recognizing that legal binding contract.

 

 

 

We might actually agree on something.  Time to test out the new bunker.  

All this is very reasonable. The problem is deeper though. The LGBT community has faced all kinds of hate and demagoguery in the past. The common thread in all that hate has been that they were made to feel as second class citizens. Not dissimilar to blacks during segregation. During that time inter racial marriage was a very hated thing. Would it have been reasonable to offer interracial couples a different type of union than marriage since so many were against it?  

 

I will try to be reasonable in my response. To a lot of people changing the term used to appease the religious is not acceptable because they still see it as the LGBT community being treated as second class people. In addition, there are plenty of people (including presidential candidates) for whom this issue is not about the word marriage itself but the act of the union. An argument could be made that by making a different classification to appease opponents of gay marriage (the term) would bolster the rhetoric from those that demonize the community at large.

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