Re:Same-Sex Marriage Is a Right, Supreme Court Rules
by woofyman on Friday June 26, 2015 @02:36PM
(#9786790)
Many of the statewide same sex marriage bans also prohibited civil unions. Virginia went so far to prohibit contracts that between same sex partners that established defacto civil unions.
Re:Same-Sex Marriage Is a Right, Supreme Court Rules
by eropple on Friday June 26, 2015 @02:21PM
(#9786691)
> a large number of opponents to same-sex marriage have expressed acceptance of same-sex civil unions
Some folks express that, yeah. I do not believe it is an honest position in the general case and have suspected since the jump that that's a move of the goalposts designed to appear more reasonable than they are, ready to be dragged back further as they are approached.
Re:Same-Sex Marriage Is a Right, Supreme Court Rules
by pekk on Friday June 26, 2015 @02:39PM
(#9786811)
What I think happened is that gay rights activists realized they would get better standing to fight for equal rights if they called it marriage. That was a successful tactic and I'm not quibbling with it. But I know there are people who would have been pacified as long as it wasn't the word marriage because I have talked to some of those people. If those people also are afraid of gay people in their hearts, that's terrible - but it actually doesn't equate to opposition to civil unions that are only a boring legal matter as opposed to the sexy, apocalyptic "attack on marriage."
However, your point still stands true in the case of custody rights, since same-sex-marriage opponents tend to claim (rather dubiously) that children raised in such a family tend to experience psychological trauma.
I'm really more-or-less neutral on the matter; it doesn't matter what it's called so long as the rights are equal for everyone. "Marriage" is a good-enough term for that.