Quote:
Originally Posted by Bownesian
While I doubt this is what the OP was suggesting, there is a defensible third opinion that says that the state should not use the word "marriage" at all to describe legal partnerships between consenting adults because it is such a loaded term. Any such partnership (hetero or homosexual) could be called "civil unions" or even "civil marriages", affording upon those adults the tax status, inheritance, child rearing and legal protection that is currently afforded to married folk. In this system, it would be up to people to decide how they identified their partnerships, be it through the definitions of their church or their own personal or family definitions.
Marriage is a term with specific meaning within certain religious groups so it does create friction to use that term to describe a union that is antithetical to those religious groups' teachings. For instance, the Catholic Church keeps its own council on who it considers to be Married and who is not, using a system of annulments for declaring that certain unions are still valid and that others never were. This is fine in my opinion because churches must be able to set their own definitions unless we seek to strip the right to Freedom of Religion.
I'm pretty certain that setting up a second tier of legal unions just for gay people (even if those rights were identical) would not pass a court challenge in Canada. To me, the choice is: use the word marriage for everyone or use it for no one. That it is the inevitable consequence of our Charter of Rights and Freedoms, as is the next step that will include the legalization of polygamous relationships as soon as someone challenges the current law.
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I agree with all of this, but the point I was making was whether the word be called marriage, or whatever would make the anti-gays happy, it should apply to everyone, and not just alienate one group of people. I'm not really that familiar with the word marriage holding a special religious meaning to be honest, but I don't think the government should have to follow religious laws.
I think the people who are against gay marriage who use that argument are just using that as a shield to hide their homophobic views.