A quick poll.

[plonq]

Same-sex marriage and the federal sponsorship scandal have been dominating the news up here recently.  Since nobody outside of the media really cares about the sponsorship scandal, I figured I'd broach the other subject.

What are your thoughts on same-sex marriage?  I've set up a (semi-anonymous) poll on the matter.  If enough people fill it out then I will post the numbers up here in a day or two.

[Poll #435934]

Feel free to discuss the matter in the comments section.  I'm always up for a good argument chat.

Comments

[dakhun.livejournal.com]

First of all, you need to see this 1.48MB video.

Nobody is going to say "We iz civil unionized :-P", they are going to say "We are married". In fact, many gay couples use the word married already even when it has no legal standing. You're not going to stop people from using the word "marriage" even when they are not religious. So the idea, for example, that you could completely replace legal marriage with legal civil unions for *everyone*, and reserve religious marriage for religious institutions, is not going to work. To deny atheists, agnostics, and those who do not believe in organised religion the full rights and title of marriage would be discriminating against them on the basis of religion (or the lack of interest thereof) - and that would be just as unconsitutional as discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation. The whole issue has been raised in different countries/provinces/states because of conflicts with the constitution of that country/province/state, and you are not going to resolve it by replacing it with a different constitutional conflict.

I'd also like to address the issue of those who oppose same-sex marriage, not from any objection to gay rights, but from some belief that obtaining those rights through the courts is not the way to go. Given that each and every single province of Canada that has granted same-sex marriages so far has done so through a court challenge (and I don't see riots in the streets here) I really don't see the problem. Also, given that the whole issue is to make gay marriage LEGAL, I don't see how you are going to avoid lawyers getting involved somehow.

There have been several countries now that have made gay marriage legal, and several that have gone the route of civil unions. Right now, everyone who has an opinion one way or the other on this topic has an excellent opportunity to use these cases to back up their opinions, but few people do. Once same-sex marriage/civil-unions are accepted in a country, the religious objections eventually die down no matter which of the two options the country chose - so why go the route of civil unions just to placate the religious types when in the end it will make no difference to them? Also, just look at the fallacious "slippery slope" type of arguments that religious types use against same-sex marriage: they say that it will lead to legal polygamy, legal incest, and people legally marrying animals. Well, that same nonsense can be used equally well to complain about civil unions, just substitute "civil union" for "marriage". Why bother trying to placate these people by downgrading same-sex marriage to same-sex civil unions in the face of such complaints, when their complaints apply equally badly to both types of arrangement?

Another thing to learn from the countries where same-sex couples are legal is that those who oppose gay marriage for religious reasons soften their opposition to it when they are reassured that they will not be forced to perform gay marriages in their churches if they don't want to, and that they will not be forced to accept gay couples joining their church. That's the tried and tested method for getting religions to accept legally binding same-sex marriages going on outside their churches. Fundamentalists will still object, but as far as I am concerned, they can go to whatever hell they believe in for being such zealous bigots.

Many gays see same-sex civil unions as a stepping stone towards full marriage rights, and in some countries that might be a logical first step. But consider the fundamentalist's point of view: to them, the downgrade from marriage to same-sex civil unions is also a stepping stone - towards no rights at all.