I'm sorry, I can't quite write a long coherent response to this but my main message is this: the civil rights movement has shown that separate is not equal. The only way civil unions vs. marriage would be fair is if EVERYONE was required to have a civil union and marriage was a religious ceremony only.
Yeah, that argument makes sense. I'm totally on board with changing the legal term for everyone while explicitly making marriage religious, which I think is a good way to do it.
That's never going to happen-- you're never going to succeed in doing what people will perceive as "taking away" rights from them. The only thing you can do is extend MORE rights to MORE people, and unfortunately that isn't in the cards yet, even if we elect a Democrat.
Nothing stopping a gay man from marrying a woman. That would be equal application of marriage.
In California, any civil union, or even if you just LIVE together for 6 months grants your partner all rights and benefits due to any other life partner. This applies to gays as well.
The only problem I heard about was healthcare for Federal employees.
Sorry, I definitely wasn't trying to give marching orders or anything like that. As I said I definitely don't have any particular personal right to have any say in this.
It's more that I was thinking aloud about what kind of strategies might be practical for getting concrete improvement. Also, based on the number of emails and such I have gotten from several friends, I was under the impression that much of the activism of the gay-rights movement was tied up in this proposition, and I really hope people don't interpret it failing as "52% of people in California think that queers shouldn't have equal rights" because I don't think that's true (it's more like 30%, which is still really sad of course).
Definitely not my decision to make, I'm just contributing my opinion (after voting against it and advocating such to other people).
There was definitely a lot of activism tied up in this proposal, but sometimes I questioned how much of it was actually from queers, and how much was from "allies" who finally found an issue they felt they could unequivocally support due to its apparently simplicity.
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In California, any civil union, or even if you just LIVE together for 6 months grants your partner all rights and benefits due to any other life partner. This applies to gays as well.
The only problem I heard about was healthcare for Federal employees.
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It's more that I was thinking aloud about what kind of strategies might be practical for getting concrete improvement. Also, based on the number of emails and such I have gotten from several friends, I was under the impression that much of the activism of the gay-rights movement was tied up in this proposition, and I really hope people don't interpret it failing as "52% of people in California think that queers shouldn't have equal rights" because I don't think that's true (it's more like 30%, which is still really sad of course).
Definitely not my decision to make, I'm just contributing my opinion (after voting against it and advocating such to other people).
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