CONSTITUTIONAL RESTRAINT: Matt Taylor replies to Mark Barton

Mark Barton writes: "If an explicit attempt to lower the prestige of civil unions without changing the substance is actionable, so surely is a thinly disguised intent to lower them without changing the substance....the only alternative possibility I can see is that it's just terminological variation for precision's sake"

Some people may prefer the term "civil union" to "same-sex marriage" because they believe it implies less prestige. But as I already said, someone who doesn't want gays to have prestige (Family Research Council et al.) is most likely against civil union too.

A more likely reason to prefer "civil union" is simply that a committed same-sex relationship and a straight marriage aren't the same thing. That doesn't mean one is better than the other; they're just different, and for some it makes sense to call them different things. For many people (especially straights) the term "gay marriage" creates cognitive dissonance, since they are so used to taking for granted that "marriage" means a male-female union.

Admittedly, this cognitive dissonance is a temporary phenomenon. Even if civil union laws stay on the books indefinitely, people will likely start using the same words for same-sex and opposite-sex couples as they learn that the similarities outnumber the differences, at which point this discussion will be moot.
posted by Eve at 3:06 PM | link

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