Quote:
Originally posted by FlamesAllTheWay@May 17 2005, 10:26 PM
Seems to me many other definitions need to be redefined after marriage is re-tooled as they discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation or even (eeep!) race.
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I don't see the parallels.
African Americans are allowed to marry. They have the same rights as caucasians or any other ethnic group in our country. If they did not we would clearly see that as discrimination and a lot of people would be in an uproar.
This issue here is that gays are not allowed to marry. They are being denied that.
I don't see having two terms as a good compromise. As I've said it divides. It segregates. It discriminates. It says this one group isn't good enough for marriage.
Why can't Christians share the term marriage? I thought Christians were supposed to be about sharing, tolerance, loving people and treating them the same even if they are different. Christ hung out with social outcasts in his day. Today homosexuals are still seen as social outcasts. And that's why two terms are not acceptable. We need to embrace this group of people and not make them outcasts. Marriage is not only a Christian insitution here. I don't have to be Christian to get married in this country. Therefore "marriage" is not a term that the Church can claim as their own, one that they can allow or disallow to groups of people. That would be discrimination.
We're not talking strictly about the definition of the word. We're talking about allowing a group of people to be able to do what everybody else in this country can do, which is get married. If "marriage" provides the exact same benefits that "civil unions" do then they are the same. The two terms should be interchangeable. If there is no distinction between the two terms then we shouldn't have two terms. The only point would be to separate one group from another. To exclude one group.