May 29th, 2008 @ 11:47 am
Civil Unions are not Enough
2 Months After New Jersey’s Civil Union Law, Problems Finding True Equality - New York Times
Nickie Brazier called U.P.S., where she is a driver, to add Heather Aurand to her health insurance the day after their Feb. 22 civil union in New Jersey, knowing it would save them $340 a month. But U.P.S. said no. “They said it was because we’re not married,” Ms. Brazier recalled.
Dr. Kevin Slavin was able to sign his partner up for the health plan at the hospital where he specializes in pediatric infectious diseases but soon learned that both men’s benefits would be treated as taxable income — not the case for his married coworkers — and that his partner could not collect his pension if Dr. Slavin died.
Maybe, maybe, civil unions might be enough if they actually meant the same thing in every place where being married granted (or removed) a right or ability. Do all gay people want to get married in a church? NO! Do all straight people get married in churches, or even have church affiliated weddings? NO! As I recall, pastors and preachers currently have the ability to not marry someone if they see fit, so the only reason I can see that people say “but pastors will be forced to marry the gays!” is for a bold faced lie of a scare tactic. The only people that should be having discussions as to whether they should allow gay marriages are the individual churches / religions. So, Catholics don’t want to marry 2 men? So be it, no one says they have to do the ceremony in a Catholic church, or even that there has to be a ceremony.
I don’t know where other people stand, but iff they can make civil unions exactly the same as marriage in ALL cases except for name, then I don’t have a problem with gays not getting “married.” But since it would be almost impossible to get all references to marriage changed to married or civil union’d, and that since marriage is mostly a legal thing and much less so a religious thing, it will be easier to just let gay people marry.
Don’t give me that slippery slope crap either, it is not a fucking slipper slope to go from 2 men or 2 women marrying to bestiality and letting people marry animals. Shut up perverts, it has never been and will never be about that at all. Any time someone says “slippery slope” I think they are full of shit. It is not a slippery slope, and almost any time someone tries to say something is one they just have too many holes in their argument and are trying to tie in something completely un-related in order to make their point of view seem valid.
