Re:Thinking About Mozilla
by dragonwriter on Tuesday April 01, 2014 @11:14AM
(#7508837)
> what I ABSOLUTELY don't get is this: why not just ask for a different word with the same legal status
The word at issue is the name of the legal status. By definition, a separate legal institution with a different name with similar (even identical) effects will be a different legal status.
And, as was the case with "separate but equal" racial policies in the US, the same groups that had "separate but equal" for same-sex partnerships as their fallback position also spent lots of time, effort, and money trying to prevent "equal" first. It was never really about the name at all, "separate but equal" was, as always, a means to assure that the "separate" part was codified in law in hopes that the effects could either be kept unequal, or that later political change would allow making the effects unequal again and that having separate institutions well established would streamline that.
The word at issue is the name of the legal status. By definition, a separate legal institution with a different name with similar (even identical) effects will be a different legal status.
And, as was the case with "separate but equal" racial policies in the US, the same groups that had "separate but equal" for same-sex partnerships as their fallback position also spent lots of time, effort, and money trying to prevent "equal" first. It was never really about the name at all, "separate but equal" was, as always, a means to assure that the "separate" part was codified in law in hopes that the effects could either be kept unequal, or that later political change would allow making the effects unequal again and that having separate institutions well established would streamline that.