My feeling is mostly that in this society, "marriage" as a word and an institution is a way of recognizing a family unit, and it's not the government's place to determine that any given family unit formed by two consenting adults is less worthy of this form of recognition than any other.
So it's not so much that I want to partake of the old institution myself any time soon as that I want to be sure that the government is treating us the same way as the Tab A-Slot B people. Settling for civil unions is tacitly encouraging the government to treat gays differently. I mean, it should be up to the people whether they h8 on the fags! Government oughta stay out of it and off my lawn.
That said, abolishing marriage would be loads of fun for the whole family if only to make the fundies squirm.
Oh yeah, I agree that civil unions are a whole lot better than nothing and may well pave the way for marriage. I'm also not particularly concerned with them being "less than" marriage, but simply with the fact that they're separate, and the government really shouldn't have to divide people's rights up into separate categories, even if they're meant to contain the same thing, just to make the public more comfortable.
And I see where you're coming from on the marriage thing, but I think abolishing marriage entirely would be even harder, socially speaking, than making sure everyone gets it. Plus, I don't really think marriage is "predominantly a religious institution," given that it's been around a whole lot longer than Christianity and quite possibly longer than any other religion as well. It may have been painted religious colors in the modern age, but historically it's primarily a civil binding. Religion just added a bunch of ceremonies to it; I don't see why it should be able to lay claim to the entire institution. But I'm sure
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(How, er, perceptive of you. ;)
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So it's not so much that I want to partake of the old institution myself any time soon as that I want to be sure that the government is treating us the same way as the Tab A-Slot B people. Settling for civil unions is tacitly encouraging the government to treat gays differently. I mean, it should be up to the people whether they h8 on the fags! Government oughta stay out of it and off my lawn.
That said, abolishing marriage would be loads of fun for the whole family if only to make the fundies squirm.
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(The comment has been removed)
And I see where you're coming from on the marriage thing, but I think abolishing marriage entirely would be even harder, socially speaking, than making sure everyone gets it. Plus, I don't really think marriage is "predominantly a religious institution," given that it's been around a whole lot longer than Christianity and quite possibly longer than any other religion as well. It may have been painted religious colors in the modern age, but historically it's primarily a civil binding. Religion just added a bunch of ceremonies to it; I don't see why it should be able to lay claim to the entire institution. But I'm sure ( ... )
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That icon- I love it XD
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