"Marriage Equality"?

The Gay Patriot weighs in on his trouble with the term:

The noun “equality” (as opposed to the adjective “equal” in the expressions “equal opportunity” or “equal right”) has socialist overtones, while liberty is more fitting with the American tradition. But, if the goal here were liberty, it would have already been reached. For gay people are free to marry, it’s just that only two states recognize their unions as such (and grant them the privileges of the institution).

Perhaps, what bothers me the most about the term “marriage equality” is its abstraction. The California Supreme Court did little to clarify this, indeed, seemed to further muddy the waters when it defined marriage as “the substantive right of two adults who share a loving relationship to join together to establish an officially recognized family of their own.”

Does that mean that all unions of two adults are equal? Is a monogamous union equal to a nonmonogamous one?

It’s not just the ambiguity of the term that bothers me, it’s that it serves to erase the difference between the sexes. Men and women are different. Men relate to each other differently than women relate to each other and differently than they relate to women in intimate relationships. To adopt the term “marriage equality” seems to erase the difference between the genders.

More on his website.
posted by Imapp Staff at 9:26 AM | link

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