What compels people to hold onto ideals so tightly that they will contradict themselves? The issue of Gay Marriage, while in my opinion beaten to a pulp, still intrigues me and after several “discussions” online, I’ve noticed something VERY interesting. Many of the arguments for gay marriage stand on the grounds of equality. At the most fundamental people want to be called married if their unified under the law, but why call it married?
On the other side of the coin there is a group of Americans who are bound and determined to remove God and any reference thereof from all aspects of our legal system. Many of these same Americans who champion atheism or non religion, or whatever, are the same ones that demand the government get out of women’s uterus’ while simultaneously unwilling to discard the use of the word marriage in favor of a more neutral, unbiased definition of the union. I recently asked a supporter(and SATUNCH defender) of Marriage equality what was it that compelled him so to hold onto a word like “marriage” when we’re so dismissive of the word “god”. I never received an answer.
Not that I was hoping they would have one, but if someone so ardently supports equality and strives for the equal treatment of people across sexual orientation, why would a word other than marriage detract from the legality of union? An adjective that describes an institution is just that… a word. Yes there’s been arguments that center around how difficult it would be to change all the legal documents an whatnot, but the sheer simplicity of legally recognizing a word is rather simple. Passing a law that says, “From this point all marriages in the state body will be now defined as Civil Unions and all previously defined marriage licenses will now be called Civil Union licenses; no change in retroactively given licenses will be needed as they will continue to be recognized, only called by their new designation from this point forth.”
This simple idea circumvents DOMA as the states no longer offer Marriage(to anyone), and will recognize (religious)marriage between a man and woman which will be equal to the civil unions afforded by the state(that everyone gets). This simple idea while simple and logical seems to confuse many people. I’ve heard the argument that they are separate but equal, when in fact they are not; and the argument of “it should be called marriage” ensues. Once again I ask… why do people hold THAT word? It’s just a word after all… what IS in a name?
