it all has to do with history. marriage is the term we've used in our culture (western/european). no one used the term civil unions before the recent past. civil union does not have the same social or cultural meaning as marriage, so the fact that it has a very similar literal meaning is, for many people, irrelevant. marriage is our word for a union between a couple, usually meant to cement family and social ties, produce offspring and create a support unit for those offspring. (and some of us also say it has something to do with love, but that's not really a necessary ingredient).
people can't really go backwards. take away the term marriage from state sanctions and you get a lot of really angry people. because when people talk about partnership, they use the word marriage. "Are you married?" is a very common example. "Are you in a civil union?" just doesn't have the same effect. Common people don't care about the logic. they know and want the word they're familiar with.
what adam fails to take into account is culture and history. i tried to find out quickly the etymology of the word marriage, but couldn't really find a good one. matrimony, however, seems to mean something about mother or making one a mother (marriage as a way to make children, perhaps?). i would not say that religion owns this word, or at least i did not find evidence that it was christian, anyway, in origin. so, basically, i don't buy that it's a religious word that shouldn't be used by the government. the reason it's associated with religions is because religious institutions are where marriages have been performed and recognized in our culture's history and especially considering how theocratic many of our past governments were (whether officially or non-officially), there was never any reason to have the government be involved except to recognize that the marriage was performed and consequently allow and prohibit certain legal rights and obligations pertaining thereto. so maybe we see it as "tied into" religion (or inextricably linked, as adam feels), but i don't think there's enough logic behind this position for us to give up on it and let religion have it. it's the american people's way of defining and understanding our relationships with and between specific people.
i fight for the right to keep that word, for myself and all others, and the right to use that word in government to also refer to gay and lesbian couples. as far as the word's original meaning (or the closest to it that i could easily find), most of us don't see marriage as a baby-making institution anymore (and plenty of couples get hitched without ever having babies), so i think that point's outdated and irrelevant both in most religious marriages as well as all civil marriages. churches can discriminate which marriages they recognize and claim that god won't recognize them either all they want. (although what are they worried about if the government allows it? god "knows" better, anyway, right? hahaha).
okay i should really be studying, but that's (mostly) my opinion. i hope it's coherent since i'm kind of out of it.
This is why you are one of my all time best friends and favorite people. You took what I was thinking, and you put it into such an eloquent little mini essay. So thought out and mini researched!
This is exactly, to a t, what I think and feel about the situation. It's a cultural institution. You can't just take that away from people.
people can't really go backwards. take away the term marriage from state sanctions and you get a lot of really angry people. because when people talk about partnership, they use the word marriage. "Are you married?" is a very common example. "Are you in a civil union?" just doesn't have the same effect. Common people don't care about the logic. they know and want the word they're familiar with.
what adam fails to take into account is culture and history. i tried to find out quickly the etymology of the word marriage, but couldn't really find a good one. matrimony, however, seems to mean something about mother or making one a mother (marriage as a way to make children, perhaps?). i would not say that religion owns this word, or at least i did not find evidence that it was christian, anyway, in origin. so, basically, i don't buy that it's a religious word that shouldn't be used by the government. the reason it's associated with religions is because religious institutions are where marriages have been performed and recognized in our culture's history and especially considering how theocratic many of our past governments were (whether officially or non-officially), there was never any reason to have the government be involved except to recognize that the marriage was performed and consequently allow and prohibit certain legal rights and obligations pertaining thereto. so maybe we see it as "tied into" religion (or inextricably linked, as adam feels), but i don't think there's enough logic behind this position for us to give up on it and let religion have it. it's the american people's way of defining and understanding our relationships with and between specific people.
i fight for the right to keep that word, for myself and all others, and the right to use that word in government to also refer to gay and lesbian couples. as far as the word's original meaning (or the closest to it that i could easily find), most of us don't see marriage as a baby-making institution anymore (and plenty of couples get hitched without ever having babies), so i think that point's outdated and irrelevant both in most religious marriages as well as all civil marriages. churches can discriminate which marriages they recognize and claim that god won't recognize them either all they want. (although what are they worried about if the government allows it? god "knows" better, anyway, right? hahaha).
okay i should really be studying, but that's (mostly) my opinion. i hope it's coherent since i'm kind of out of it.
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This is exactly, to a t, what I think and feel about the situation.
It's a cultural institution. You can't just take that away from people.
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