On the Threshold of Bigotry

Hi, long time browser first time poster. After browsing this topic with earnest i decided to come out of hiding and perhaps contribute if i may since all of you seem to be running around in the same circle you were at the start, no offence meant to anyone.Hoot Mon, i gather from your posts that you don't mind if homosexual couples can have civil unions, you also don't mind if they get all of the rights that heterosexual people get, so essentially you want to give them the legal side that comes with a marraige but just not the name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet perhaps?
If it has all the exact same privilages, since denying them any legal privilages that you have for no reason other than the fact that they are gay would be bigotry, would it not just be the exact same? In essence what i am trying to say is; is it not you that wants to call a "bicycle" a "tricycle"?

Whether or not they were using homophobia to target consumers was not on anyone's mind here hoot, it would be foolish to think that was their plan. The fact still stands that the advert could be construed as homophobic, and obviously was, so they decided to go for something that would not. If someone was offended and there is a simple way to prevent offending people then "just do it". (apologies for the bad joke)Perhaps the world did not give a hoot about homophobia until gay people brought it to the forefront, but the fact that they felt the need to do so obviously showed that they were feeling persecuted. If they were making something from nothing it would have died long ago but it hasn't. From what you said i can summarise it as "things would have been a lot better if gays had just kept quiet, there wouldn't be all this needless fuss". well i think I'll take a leaf out of Rrhain's book and say "things would have been a lot better if blacks had just kept quiet, there wouldn't be all this needless fuss".Personally i don't find you to be a bigot for believing marraige is between a man and a woman only. I don't think you are a bigot for believing two men cannot marry in the conventional sense of the word. That is all fine and good. It seems foolish to me that your only reasoning for this is "that's just the way it is" and "It's just what i believe" but like i said, you are entitled to your opinion and nobody is going to take it away from you.

Well what makes their opinion of "needless persecution of gay people is bad" invalid any more than the black people's opinion that "slavery of black people is bad".Both are forms of persecution for no reason other than what the people are, so why not?You and i both know the reason black people were released from slavery, it was unjust.I'm all for ridiculing gay people who shout homophobia at everything and anything just as much as i am for ridiculing black people about shouting racism at everything, because it is ridiculous. But I think we can agree that we should not ar all gay people with the one brush, not all gay people are like that. Most are content to live their lives quietly with their partners and not kick up a fuss.Here's the kicker though, they see an injustice. They are afforded all the legal benefits of heterosexual people in all areas of the law except one. Marraige. Is it wrong for them to assume that they should be awarded the rights to marry the one they love?Now i know what you are going to say, "change civil partnerships so they afford gay people the legal rights as marraige". That's good, in principle, but if put into effect a civil partnership is becoming a marraige. If a bike has two wheels and we can all see it has two wheels but the makers call it a tricycle then that's all well and good, most people will still call it a bike though. The same thing will happen to civil partnerships, if it affords all the legal benefits of a marraige, even if it is called something different, i forsee society would end up just calling it a marraige, even if it "isn't" one.This is a compromise situation to keep you happy, legally i assume if two contracts are the same they cannot be given two different names, they ARE the same contract, the only way to give them two different names would be to change marraige into the joining of two people of different sex and a civil partnership to be the joining of two people of the same sex. The key word there being "change" as, what has been pointed out to you before, there is nothing in the marraige contract today to say it is only between a man and a woman."Then the law should stay out of marraiges, leave it to the churches!" i hear you cry? Fair enough, let's seperate them. The law no longer recognises a marraige of church. There is no contract and no legal benefits. Good enough for you? I mean, your holy union is between you and the one you love in the eyes of God and you do not need the legal side to make it a marraige am I right? You could then just go get a civil partnership to get the legal side of it and all would be well. Would this be a good compromise for all people with a heterosexual marraige?