What I object to is specifically the concept of marriage being applied to gay couples. I'd be for some kind of legal contract that provided the benefits without the shadow of marriage being involved in it, especially the right to hospital visitation.
I agree that that should an acceptable compromise especially considering the Gorgian Knot that all your (pl) panties are twisted up into just because the word "marriage" is being used.
The problem is the wording of the vast body of laws, contracts, official policies, rules and regulations and bylaws, etc, on every single level of public existence, all of which explicitly reference "marriage". The problem with the practice of law is that everything is based on the actual wording of the law, etc, in question. When you file a lawsuit to correct an egregious wrong, you need to find a specific law or laws that support your position and then you need to prepare your arguments based on the wording of that/those law(s). Many times, such as in the BSA religious discrimination cases, the wording you need to use can end up appearing almost farcical to non-lawyers observing the proceedings, but that does not change the fact that in legal arguments it is the precise wording of the law in question that is of the utmost importance.
So when a gay couple who are not allowed to marry encounters a situation in which a law, contract, official policies, rule or regulation or bylaw, etc, applies (which happens just about every day for everybody) and that law, contract, official policies, rule or regulation or bylaw, etc, explicitly references marriage, then that couple will be denied. Doesn't matter that they have a legally recognized civil partnership or whatever your "some kind of legal contract" may be, the rule says "married", they are not "married", so denied.
So what's the solution? I'm a guy and we're faced with a problem. However much you want to whine about how that problem makes you feel,
I want to solve that problem. That's what guys do, seek solutions to problems. So how do we solve this problem?
Obviously, you could go through each and every law, contract, official policy, rule or regulation or bylaw, etc, and rewrite each and every one of them to also include whatever legal equivalents you come up with, including explicit wording that will also cover all possible future legal equivalents that someone may think of. Is that at all feasible? Not even remotely.
OK, so let's pass one law that establishes that legal status and that makes that status equivalent to marriage in all other laws, contracts, official policies both public and private, rules and regulations and bylaws, etc. That should solve the problem, right? Well, we all know that that law will get challenged, especially by hard-nosed "true Christians" who have their panties all twisted up into Gorgian knots. Tie up the courts in unnecessary lawsuits causing misery for everybody except for the lawyers raking in the dough.
No, that won't work either.
OK, so why not just establish a
legal definition of "marriage" which also applies to gay couples such that they can have the status of "married". It's a
legal definition,
not a religious one, so it would have no impact on anyone's dubious religious sensitivities -- a single word can have many different meanings depending on the context; consider the many meanings of the word "round" when taken in its many contexts.
That's why I would advocate a two-ceremony system such as exists in several other countries. First you go to the government office where you got your marriage license (you had to go there first anyway) and you have a small civil ceremony which makes the union legally binding. Then you go have the religious ceremony of your choice, should you so choose. Some churches won't have you? Fine, there are others that will. That's how it's always been. Some churches don't want to recognize a marriage performed in another church (or between undesirables such as divorcs, someone from a different religion, someone of a different skin color or a different nationality) then let them stew in it just as they have done for centuries; nothing new there. All that really matters in practical terms is the legality of the civil ceremony.
If somebody's marital status has nothing to do with your church, then you have no say in the matter. Sure, you can bitch and moan about it, but you have no more right nor authority to block their marital status than a Hasidic Jew has to keep a gentile from eating a cheeseburger, even if it is topped with bacon.
... but gay marriage is just the latest in the social program to destroy marriage, ...
So they're trying to destroy marriage by promoting marriage? Do you also believe that it was necessary to destroy the village in order to save it? That kind of illogic should have died out with Nam.
... , because gay marriage does NOT benefit society which was the whole point of the marriage benefits.
Except for the fact that marriage
does benefit society in so many ways, including but not exclusive to the creation of stable communities consisting of stable households with stable families that take care of themselves and of others. Your efforts to break up those families and households would only serve to destabilize the communities which also now have to take care of all those former family members who, thanks to your zealous efforts, now have nobody to take care of them.
It is
NOT necessary to destroy the community in order to save it!
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