Please help me understand the marriage vs. civil unions argument

[rockymountaindem]

Reading the DU debate over Sen. Biden's debate comments regarding gay marriage has reminded me that I don't think I've ever properly understood this issue. Please help clear this up for me. Now, I think the best way for me to go about this is state my personal understanding of the issue, and you may all correct me where you think I have it wrong, because it's become obvious that I'm missing something important. So, here goes...

When I heard Biden's comments at the debate about ensuring full legal equality of gay couples under civil unions, I did not think that there was anything amiss. Then, when Ifill asked specifically about marriage, I thought his response about being against "marriage" but otherwise for full equality would make a few eyes roll, but I didn't foresee the amount of disappointment that remark clearly generated among many GLBT people here. Obviously, many of you don't think that civil unions go far enough. Now, I'm in no position to tell anybody what they should want. If it's "marriage" you want and not "civil unions", then I hope someday soon marriage will be the reality. My difficulty is in understanding where Biden went wrong and why the distinction is so important.

It seems to me that "full legal equality" is the actual goal here (this is a good time to correct me if I'm wrong). However, I've seen some posters say that such a thing would be impossible under a civil union and could only be attained through granting marriage rights to gay couples. Why is that? If civil unions were designed in such a way so as to have fewer rights than marriage, that would be bad. But if a civil union confers all the same rights as marriage, as Biden indicated he supported, then why is that bad? How come equality would not be possible under a civil union, as long as the civil union law were to include all the same things as marriage laws? All I can think is that having gay marriages called just that, "marriage", would represent the final victory over the forces of the anti-gay movement. In that sense, I understand exactly what the goal is. The goal is acceptance and equality. But, short of using the same name, I still don't see why civil unions could not be designed in some way as to ensure that they are tantamount to marriage, with the only difference being the name used to describe the two institutions. Why would that be impossible, as some have said?

Again, I understand that for many gays and lesbians, marriage is the ultimate goal. But, if that is not easily achievable in the near term (say, five to ten years), would a legally equivalent civil union option be acceptable as a stepping-stone to ultimately winning marriage rights? It would seem to me that having full legal rights under a different name would be better, in the near term, than nothing at all. It also seems to me that winning that battle would get more people used to the idea of having gay couples on the same legal level as heterosexual couples, thereby making the ultimate goal of marriage more easily attainable over the longer term (10-20 years).

Maybe I'm completely wrong here. That's why I'm writing this post. I hope I've written it in a respectful manner, because it makes me sad to see so many of our GLBT posters so obviously upset, and I certainly don't want to contribute to any ill will. This debate has obviously got emotions running high at the moment, and I just want to have a better grasp of the specifics. So, please educate me.

Edit: grammar mistake

[msongs]

1. "marriage" =churches/religion/federal rights, "civil unions" = state/local rights IMO nt

[rockymountaindem]

2. What if the civil unions were defined at the federal level?

Would that settle things? Obviously the whole issue of deciding it at the state level is just a dodge by people who don't approve of gay rights, because that path is nothing but an expressway to a swamp of conflict-of-law issues and a confusing maze of regulations which proponents of the idea hope will thwart gay rights. I understand that. But, would a federal civil unions bill be acceptable?

[leftofcool]

8. That would go against the Constitution

....laws delegated to the states

[TechBear_Seattle]

10. Please see the US Constitution

Specifically, Article I Sections 8, 9 and 10, and the Tenth Amendment. You can read it here.

[TechBear_Seattle]

3. Which is fundamentally and legally incorrect

The law mentions "marriage." There are several thousand rights, protections, priviledges and perqs granted solely through marriage by thousands of local, state and federal laws. In contrast, there is not one single legal right given through confirmation, baptism, ordination or any other religious ceremony. And keep in mind that a marriage ceremony carries no legal weight whatsoever: what makes a legal marriage is the filing of legally required documents along with a statutory fee to the proper civil authority.

[Gormy Cuss]

27. That's the part that gets glossed over every time: marriage is a legal term.

Civil marriage has nothing whatsoever to do with religious marriage. To say that same sex partners need a new class of union is fundamentally wrong.

[uppityperson]

35. Thank you for posting that succinctly. So is it terminology?

As a hetero in a legal marriage/civil union, I can not for the life of me figure out why it has to be between opposite sexes. I would love to have it be the same for all, regardless of any sex.

Down in post 7 you write "As for the argument that "marriage is a religious institution," that is utter and complete bullshit. There is not a single law in this country, at any level of government, that recognizes any religious ceremony. There are no legal benefits to being confirmed. There are no tax perqs for having a bar mitzvah. You do not gain rights of inheritance, join ownership or common property for becoming ordained.

The legal institution at issue is "marriage." If it is good enough for heterosexuals, why isn't it good enough for me?"

I agree with that and have had to explain the difference between any sort of religious thing and the legal thing.

I understand the emotional and acceptance differences between "civil union" and "marriage". I had a strict legal partnership with my kid's dad (read the state marriage statutes which basically said who owned what, how to split it up, and signed them. No ceremony, no nothing, just the legal bit) and had a small family ceremony AND signed legal papers with person I've been with for 13 yrs. The first, the commitment wasn't there, it was a legal protection thing. The second, the social and legal commitments were there.

So, having said all that, and I am trying to figure this out, how can we get the same for all? Change not only the legalities but the words? I'd be happy to say I'm in a civil union, but again have not had to fact denial of being able to use the term "marriage". I have friends who have been married socially and commitedly longer than I have legally, but haven't been able to get the legally recognized marriage due to their choromosomes.

Thanks for reading and hopefully answering.

[glowing]

4. Biden is Catholic, right? The last time I looke the church did not recognize

marriage between same sex couples... But understanding that a legal union is a contract between two persons and recognized by the state is something entirely different.. Seems to me, states need to stop calling this contract a marriage and call it a civil union for everyone... I don't like Marriage on the certificate...

[stray cat]

5. That actually a good idea -

[cali]

17. uh, so what? The Church is also against any form of abortion or birth control

[glowing]

31. dude, its not my church.. I'm not Catholic.... It seems to me Catholics pick and choose

what they want to hold onto.. Oh well.. I think I've heard Biden say though that he doesn't care for abortion, but won't deny the right towards others.. thought I heard it on a Sunday show a couple of weeks back.

[Bill McBlueState]

25. think about the religious right

Do you think members of the religious right would be happy or unhappy if the government refused to grant them marriages and instead issued only civil unions?

The same people who are opposed to marriage equality would also oppose this "civil unions for everyone" scheme that always gets floated on the internet.

[glowing]

32. Seriously, they are too stupid to know the difference.. its the ceremony

that they care about.. not the certificate.

[SharonAnn]

33. In many Catholic countries (i. e. Italy, Chile, etc.) there must be a civil

ceremony for the union to be legal. That parties involved may then have a religious wedding if they so choose, but it is not necessary and would not, by itself, be a legal union according to the state.

[PDJane]

6. It's a question of equality, of being simply accepted.

In my view, since it's the state that confers the benefits of marriage outside of spiritual realm, the best solution might be to ensure that if you want those benefits, the state must perform the ceremony. Religious marriage is, or should be, a separate rite with no connection to the legal benefits.

This is, in fact, the logical extension of the separation of church and state.

However, saying that gays and lesbians cannot marry, in the full sense of the word, means that the second-class-citizen act continues, no matter how logical it sounds.

[TechBear_Seattle]

7. Go to the Wikipedia and look up "Jim Crow Laws"

The distinction between "marriage" and "civil union" is the distinction between "For Whites Only" and "For Coloreds." It is a distinction rooted in bigotry and an attempt to institutionalize that biogtry into law.

For more than two centuries, the laws of the United States and its consituent states, territories and posessions have recognized "marriage." This recognition comes with more than two centuries of court precedent and judicial rulings, as well as almost two centuries more of common law inherited from Great Britain. Even IF you could create a totally identical body of thousands of state laws in every one of 50 states, the District of Columbia, not to mention posessions such as Guam and Puerto Rico, and a totally identical body of thousands of federal laws, civil unions would still be unequal because, by virtue of not being marriage, would still not have access to any of these precedents.

As for the argument that "marriage is a religious institution," that is utter and complete bullshit. There is not a single law in this country, at any level of government, that recognizes any religious ceremony. There are no legal benefits to being confirmed. There are no tax perqs for having a bar mitzvah. You do not gain rights of inheritance, join ownership or common property for becoming ordained.

The legal institution at issue is "marriage." If it is good enough for heterosexuals, why isn't it good enough for me?

[justiceischeap]

12. I agree! Now a little history about marriage

And just as an aside, at one time in history there were legally recognized homosexual marriage in ancient Rome extending into the Christian period. So for any religion to try and lay claim to the word "marriage" and it's meaning are full of sh*t. The word "marriage" according to some pre-dates Christianity (the sensible one's that don't think we've walked with dinosaurs).

[rockymountaindem]

30. Thank you

That is the answer I was looking for. But now another question: according to your post above the federal government can't act on this. Does this mean that gay marriage laws would have to be passed in all 50 states in order for it to really take effect?

[TechBear_Seattle]

39. If you want to be proactive, then yes

Each state and posession -- do not forget that Guam, Puerto Rico, the Marshall Islands and other US posessions have their own separate bodies of law, just like states do -- would have to amend their own marriage laws.

HOWEVER it is certainly possible for the federal courts, excercising their mandate to interpret and apply the US Constitution, to declare that barring same-sex couples from marriage is a violation of constitutional protections. In Brown v. Board of Education, the US Supreme Court ruled that segregation was a direct violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which declares that "no state shall… deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." In Loving v. Virginia, the Supreme Court ruled that state laws prohibiting, even criminalizing, interracial marriage violated both the Equal Protection Clause and the Due Process Clause found in the Fifth Amendment. And Lawrence v. Texas overturned state laws which criminalized "sodomy" on the grounds that they violated the Due Process Clause.

When we leave basic human and civil rights to the states, there are always states which adamantly refuse to extend those rights. That is why we have a Constitution that overrides any possible statute that is passed by Congress or any state, and why we have a court system charged with enforcing the Constitution and the protections guaranteed by it. This is also why it is so exceedingly painful to hear Obama and Biden say that marriage should be left up to the states: they are echoing all to clearly the people who said that integration should be left to the states, that allowing or not allowing interracial marriages should be left to the states, and that states should be allowed to prosecute people for "sodomy." Adding insult to injury is Obama's and Biden's steadfast and clearly stated refusal to take any steps in support of equal rights in a court case similar to Brown or Loving or Lawrence. Without the support of the executive branch, the chance of such a case being heard by the Supreme Court, much less receiving a ruling in favor of equality, is very slight.

[Warpy]

9. Separate but equal

which we know is always separate and rarely equal. That's why gays are pushing for the rights plus the name, because they know the rights will be chipped away if they don't get it all.

However, marriage at its core is the promotion of a non relative to first degree relative status, something a civil union would also accomplish. That would go so far to overcoming the horrors gays and lesbians face when a partner gets sick or dies and the partner's family is hostile. Think about not being able to visit a beloved spouse in an intensive care unit or be part of his/her funeral. It is horrible.

Civil unions could be the path to full marriage. They could also be a non religious alternative without a lot of the sexist baggage of traditional marriage that would appeal to straight couples, too. Only time will tell whether or not it's a viable alternative or just more ghettoization of gays and lesbians.

That's the controversy right now.

[TechBear_Seattle]

11. In the same way that Jim Crow was the path to racial equality

You will forgive this gay man for being neither enthusiastic nor optimistic.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

16. The Jim Crow era *was* the path to racial equality

(Although the Jim Crow laws that give it its name were an obstacle in its path).

It's very possible that there was a shorter, more direct path - we'll never know for sure - but I find it implausible that the transition directly from slavery to full racial equality could have been accomplished overnight.

[Warpy]

21. None of us is thrilled with more separate but equal nonsense

but, as I pointed out, it could easily go either way.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

13. Separate but equal lead to Brown vs Board of Education.

I don't think we'd have seen the end of segregation without years of separate-but-equal segregation first.

I think that one of the strongest arguments for the introduction of civil unions legally equivalent to marriage but not actually called that in law is that gay marriage is likely to arrive sooner if approached via a halfway house rather than if its supporters hold out for all or nothing.

[Longhorn]

19. That's exactly it.

Well said! :hi:

[LiberalHeart]

14. "Civil union" is a chicken-shit way of saying "marriage" without huge political fallout.

[Beregond2]

15. There are three issues.

The first is that, at present, most civil union laws do not convey all the same rights as marriage. I don't see that as a problem, as those laws can be amended over time.

The second is the desire to avoid "separate but equal" status. Again, I don't share this concern. The comparison to the history of black "separate but equal" laws is not really valid. It isn't as if we are talking about all aspects of society, from education to where we can sit on a bus. This is only about the legal status of our relationships.

The third is really emotional. Many gays feel that only the word "marriage" conveys the proper level of respect for their relationships. They see it as the ultimate validation and sign of acceptance from society. Personally, I don't think we are going to gain a thing by forcing people to give us a word. You can't legislate attitudes. I also think that by placing such a high value on a straight institution, we are undermining our own position, not strengthening it.

But then, I come from a generation that gloried in our differences from straight people. Now, young gay people seem determined to ape heterosexuals in every way they can. If that's what they want, OK. But I wonder if they will find the happiness they seek down that road.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

18. I think there's one other that you don't list.

I think you sum up those three well, but the one big one you don't list is how resilience to future Republican governments.

The big advantage that I can see of a bill saying "gay couples can now get married" over a bill saying "gay couples can now enter civil unions with all the same legal rights and responsibilities as marriage, without exception" is *not* what they do themselves, but how hard it will be to change them in the future.

A future Republican government would find it a lot harder to say "your marriage is no longer valid" than to say "here is a law that applies to marriages but not to civil unions".


That said, I think that the best way to get gay marriage recognised is to introduce a civil unions bill now, and let the right-wingers get used to it before renaming it, rather than trying for all or nothing in one swoop.

[Beregond2]

38. I see your point.

But the fallback position for them has been to say: "Civil unions yes; marriage no." It allows them to retain their bigotry without seeming to. If they then later tried to attack civil unions, they would be sacrificing that pretence, and openly embracing intolerance. I'm not sure that's a road they would feel safe choosing. Even they know that majority opinion does not look kindly on that level of open bigotry.

[Lyric]

20. There is no "same-sex marriage argument." You are either pro marriage equality, or

pro forced-religion, and *against* the First Amendment clause that forbids the governmental establishment of religion.

There is not a single rational argument in opposition to marriage equality that is not rooted in religion. Not. A. Single. One. Even the arguments based on "tradition" are rooted in religion, which is where the "tradition" CAME from.

Obama and Biden say what our society demands that they say in order to be electable. No matter how much a federal court tries to parse words and nitpick ideas, the basic truth remains: depriving gay people of the right to marry is unconstitutional under both the First Amendment (no establishment of religion) AND the Fourteenth Amendment (equal treatment under the law.) The sideways arguments about "tradition" are just bullshit meant to give cover to politicians who know damned well that it's about religion, but don't want to step on the toes of their ignorant constituents.

What more chilling is this: for every case in which a court sidesteps the real issues and upholds a ban on same-sex marriage, the wall of separation between church and state is chipped away just a little bit more. This isn't just a "gay" issue--it's a LIBERTY issue. When banning gay marriage is permitted in order to uphold "traditions" that are rooted in religion, one must wonder what other religious beliefs they'll try to codify under the banner of "tradition."

I suppose it's easier to ignore the danger when it's the majority religion that's being forced on other people, but who's to say that Christianity will always be the majority religion? This willful ignorance and unconcern on the part of certain groups of Christians is incredibly stupid and naive--it's like voting to give your favorite President incredible powers, and completely forgetting the fact that your "team" might not always be in charge, that the other "team" is going to have exactly the same powers someday, and that those same powers could easily be used AGAINST you.

We gay people don't have nearly as many allies in this fight as we should have, because many people just don't see the underlying dangers to their own civil rights, don't think it's a priority, or are just too lazy to be bothered with it. If everyone understood just how serious this fight is, the nation would be up in arms.

[stray cat]

23. You are either for us or for the terrorists? I cringe with either or simplifications

[Lyric]

28. Well instead of poo-pooing at my phrasing, offer an alternative.

Is there a serious position against same-sex marriage that does not involve religion, either directly or indirectly?

[morningglory]

22. Democrats and wedge issues...

I worked for Kerry in '04, my first time on the streets, phones, holding signs and cleaning the bathrooms in the Kerry HQ. Was walking from an Elizabeth Edwards rally with 2 great Democrats, african-american man and woman. They had been very involved for years. One was a good school teacher my son had had in middle school. They were the salt of the earth, good dems. One in retirement was on the local judicial watch, sitting in courtrooms in retirement to keep an eye out. I view them as intelligent. During the walk, they both stated that if Kerry came out for gay marriage or abortion, they would not vote for him. That astounded me. I could not believe it. That is why a good man like H. Dean skirted around the issue like Fred Astaire. I think there are some things about the AA society/culture that I do not quite understand. So, if someone could inform me, I am listening...

[Bill McBlueState]

24. One out of every seven Americans lives in a state that allows same-sex marriage

Straight people in California and Massachusetts seem to be getting by okay; I'd think it would be pretty easy to expand this concept to the entire US without legal tricks like granting everyone civil unions instead.

[alarimer]

26. My opinion is that "marriage" should be left up to churches.

They can marry whomever they want. I don't care but if anyone wants to be married in the eyes of the state, it should be "civil unions"- gay or straight. Go to a JP- that's a civil union, not a marriage. But of course it would have all the rights that "marriage" now has in the eyes of the state- taxes, insurance, inheritance, whatever. If this makes any sense at all. I THINK that might have been what Biden was trying to say. I am not sure but it seems like it is semantics whether you want to call it marriage or civil union. They should be legally equivalent.

[Oeditpus Rex]

29. Seems to me that civil unions are a way for straight-and-narrow people

to appear "liberal" and "tolerant" while maintaining the sense of superiority they need — or, in the case of some politicians, appeasing their constituency.

I'd like to think Biden and Obama and many other Democrats are actually in favor of same-sex marriage but just can't afford to go on record as such because it'd be political suicide. But, who knows?

[Realityhack]

34. Seprate but equal isn't.

One issue is just using a different word is silly and demeaning. It is like saying women can have the right to elect officials but not the right to vote. Only men get the right to vote... women get a civil election right. It is BS meant intentionally to be separatist and demeaning.

Secondly, unless very carefully worded and passed on a federal level, not calling something Marriage can cause issues around existing laws that state married couples, etc. So it may not in fact actually BE a synonymous term.

Separate but equal wasn't right for blacks, and it isn't right for GLBT.

Note: I understand fully why democrats have to support civil unions over gay marriage. I don't like it, but I understand it and I am not asking more of them because it would backfire.

[Behind the Aegis]

36. Did you get the answer you needed?

Several posters have made very good points, so I won't belabor it. I appreciate the way you wrote your OP; it was very respectful.

Oh and a belated L'Shana Tova. :hi:

[rockymountaindem]

37. More or less

and thank you. :hi: