You're just giving it a different name; the point is that conservatives don't want to see gay couples having the same rights as straight couples, regardless of the label you tack onto the legal and social relationship.

The entire arguement is now about what to call it - . One of the things driving the debate is that certain religious people do not want what they consider to be a sacred state of affairs to be tainted by association with what they consider sin. The Mass Supreme Court has decided that (in Mass) the same terminology must be used for both heterosexual unions and homosexual unions. I say, don't redefine marriage, redefine civil union. And get the government out of the business of marriage (a religious concept).

Then sorry, certain religious people, but you dropped the ball when you mixed church and state and made marriage a governmental function. They just have to suck it up and deal with it now.

You won't get the government out of marriage; better to squeeze gay marriage in and call it a day.

What is homosexual union anyway?

How do you define who is homosexual to preclude the "sneaky petes" from taking advantage of the government handouts that will result?

Can anybody out there identify, in absolute terms, that s/he is gay?

aconservative

I didn't limit it to homosexual unions - just consenting adults. Move the "government handouts" to unions with children. Next issue?

Why do you have to define anything? If two people want to get married, they get married; end of story.

Because there is a question of law - and the law requires (at least it should require) fairly precise definitions. Note that several christian priests will perform a religious marriage between same-sex couples. But that's not what the fuss is (currently) about. The fuss is, gays want the legal rights and benefits that accrue to married couples. And to do that, they have to redefine the legal definition of marriage. At this point, several factors kick in. The biggest one is that there is a large and vocal set of society that cannot abide by any recognition that gay marriage could be valid at all. As long as the religious ceremonies were performed by a small subset of clergy (and not "mainstream" clergy, usually) they could ignore itt, or tell themselves that "those aren't REAL marriages". As soon as the state sanctions gay marriage, that puts the gay marriage on the same level as a heterosexual marriage, equating them. This they cannot stand. Since for many of these people, marriage is a religious term, returning the term marriage strictly to the religious sphere (as I and others suggest) might reduce the militancy of these people.

I ask those who have legitimate reasons for opposing gay marriage to post them in my blog that can be found some where on the forum. I promise to delete any posts which mock someone so those who have reasons can air them without fear of persecution.

Cheers

The thing I always about "Why not just offer homosexuals civil unions with the same benefits as marriage?" is that it'll discriminate against homosexuals as segregation laws discriminated against non-whites. What makes me doubt that though (besides the fact that in this case, it's not as if people are being required to use different bathrooms, schools, etc.) is that there are heterosexual couples who have civil unions (right?). Have they experienced any discrimination because of having "only" a civil union? If not, then I don't see why homosexuals would be discriminated against, unless them being homosexual would be the reason, in which case, they'd be discriminated against even if they were allowed to marry.

Heterosexual couples do not have a legal status known as "civil union." They are married or they are unmarried.

maybe i'm just naive, but i thought separation of church and state meant that the government wouldn't force religious beliefs on anyone. We have freedom of religion in this country, and for that i'm grateful. That means that no one in the gov't can tell me who, where, when, or how i can worship whatever God i choose to believe in. right? i choose to believe in God, and i choose to worship him, hopefully much the same as my ancestors did when they left Britain to flee from religious persecution. I believe that same sex marriage is wrong in the eyes of the Lord.

But i also believe in freedom of religion and separation of church and state. I'm pretty sure that this means that the gov't should not discriminate against someone based on sexual orientation. There was a time when we would burn people at the stake who were suspected of witchcraft, something that we no longer do. why did we stop? because the laws are not entirely based on Christian beliefs. If you're a Wiccan today, you have rights. Lord knows i don't agree with the practice, but i agree that you have rights. So what's the difference? why are modern day witches allowed to worship who they please, without fear of persecution, but a homosexual can't get a tax break?

bagh! maybe i'm just naive...

You're not naive at all; you're spot on. There is no meaningful non-religious response from the right to any of the points you made.