Vermont legalized gay marriage

[Valdez]

That's exactly what I just said! Take the term "civil union" give it the rights that a "marriage" has now, and watch as (almost) everyone is happy. I also like the idea of retaining the term marriage and applying it exclusively to the religious concept.

Honestly, it's getting to the point where people feel a need to disagree with someone in this thread even if they agree with them!

You miss my point. I'm talking about not using the word "marriage" in any context whatsoever. Not even religious ones. The word causes so much problems between those who have an issue with it being applied to same-sex and those who don't. So remove the word in every context so that it doesn't cause any problems. Don't retain it in any way at all. That is my point.

And you failed to answer my earlier question: why shouldn't marriage be applied to same-sex people? Like I said before, religion didn't create the term or the concept; so why should the religious have exclusive access to it?

 

[ShinyFlareon]

Er, Valdez, I'm going to take Jeff's side with this one. You just basically restated his point. I can see how that point might have been misunderstood, but you did just repeat what he was trying to say.

 

[Valdez]

Jeff was talking about giving civil unions the same rights as marriage, while retaining the term marriage for religious people only. I'm saying get rid of the term entirely. For the third time, religion didn't create marriage and religion shouldn't dictate who gets to partake in marriage and who gets to partake in civil unions. Is it really so hard to see that difference?

 

[Jeff]

Don't put words into my mouth, I never said that religion should define civil unions. I said that civil unions would just be a state-recognized "marriage" by another name. That way, the government would be free to apply it to any type of couple with very little backlash. The term "marriage" would be reserved for the religious concept because although religions didn't create the concept of a union between two people, the word carries a religious context for many people.

 

[Satoshi-chan]

The difficulty with that is international recognition.

Indeed. While a "civil union" might carry the same rights as a marriage in the states (as some are propositioning as the end-all to the marriage issue), it might not be recognized as such outside of the US, whereas a "marriage" would more likely be.

 

[Martonimos]

It looks like Jeff and Valdez are saying the same thing: do away with "marriage" altogether, and call everything--same sex or otherwise-- as "civil union." I believe this to be impractical; not many people are going to want to do away with that term.

Since this

Screw the T-Virus, I have money.