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 Monday, December 19, 2005
Straight Civil Unions Mess Up Marriage/The Washington Blade
"Messing up marriage", Chris Crain (Executive Editor) http://www.washblade.com/blog/index.cfm?type=blog&start=12/11/05&end =12/18/05 "Oh, I respect gay relationships. I would compare them to straight couples who've moved in together but aren't ready for marriage, or maybe to a grandmother and a mother who live together to help each other out." What would you think of a person who said that about your relationship? I would think that someone who views us that way, while more benevolent than our president and his fellow travelers, just doesn't "get it." But that's exactly what the domestic partner legislation pending in the District of Columbia would say. Marriage is for straight couples, under the new law, while domestic partnership is for gay couples, straight couples who don't feel like marrying, and for blood relatives who live together and support each other. It didn't have to be that way. There's no Living-in-Sin Alliance pushing for D.P. legislation that would give straight couples another option short of marriage to recognize their relationship. There's no Grandma-Mama Alliance pushing for marriage-like rights for their domestic arrangements. No, it's the Gay & Lesbian Activists Alliance pushing for all these things, and in so doing they are (however unintentionally) disrespecting our own relationships, weakening traditional marriage before we even have a chance to partake of it, and wrecking the odds we'll have the opportunity to do so anytime soon. . . And offering "marriage-lite" to straight couples is proven (in Europe and elsewhere) to threaten marriage itself, because it allows couples an easier option than a lifetime commitment. It also makes gay relationships the equivalent of straight couples who don't want to marry, and it redresses a wrong that doesn't need redressing; straight couples can marry if they want these rights. . . Posted by Chris Crain, Executive Editor | Dec. 16 at 1:10 PM | ccrain@window-media.com posted by maggie at 2:15 PM | link 
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While i respectfully disagree with the premise, his conclusion is spot on. Marriage is "lite" enough these days already, thank you very much. It should be taken more seriously, not less.
My questions for Chris (and the gay community in general):
How does providing me with the capacity to insure my disabled sister affect a gay man's relationship with his partner? I don't see that it does, unless Chris is willing to maintain that there is such a thing as a common, shared, societal understanding of marriage that *is* affected by domestic partnerships and the existence of gay marriage.
Aren't you discriminating against individuals in grandma-mama alliances? Doesn't that discrimination affect their children if grandma is not able to stay home with the kids because she needs health insurance and isn't covered under mama's plan? Why do you want to hurt mama's children? After all, individuals living in grandma-mama alliances do tend to be of lower socio-economic status. (Maybe grandma-mama alliances should form a special interest group.)
Thirdly, what is your hang-up with sex? If a grandma decides to permanently move-in with her daughter to create a more stable environment for the kids, why are you so repulsed by being compared to them? After all, they're just two adults of the same-sex living in the same household. Do you have an archiac idea that kids should only be raised in households where the adults are having sex? Why do you feel the need to impose those ideas on everybody else?
Anonymous, I don't normally respond to comments where the commenter couldn't be bothered to leave their name: but in case this is your first time -
I personally think that it would be simpler in the US to just open up marriage to both same-sex and mixed-sex couples, without having "civil unions".
If, however, the one thing everyone can get behind to campaign for is a civil union - for the whole nation, not state by state, recognized federally, and giving all the rights, benefits, obligations, and responsibilities of marriage - then I don't see why this federal civil union shouldn't be open to mixed-sex couples as well as same-sex couples.
There's no reason not to have a state-level "reciprocal beneficiaries" law, for any two, three, or four people who live together, or something like the samenleven contract in the Netherlands. This would be a third form of contract, which would not assume, as marriage and civil unions would, any particular form of relationship.
Aren't you discriminating against individuals in grandma-mama alliances?
Do you feel that if a grandfather and his daughter are living together, they ought to be able to get married? If not, perhaps you could explain why you think a grandmother and her daughter ought to be able to.
Only people that may ethically procreate together ought to be able to get married. Mothers and daughters, fathers and daughters, any couple of one or both sexes, ought to be able to get the protections and benefits without being granted procreation rights. They would not gain the right to have sex (as in, do anything that may result in procreation), and they would not be kept from marrying someone else later so as to exercise their basic civil right to procreate.
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