separate but equal?
...and here I go again...
Something just came through my inbox...gives you food for thought...
“Comparing marriage to civil unions is a bit like comparing diamonds to rhinestones. One is, quite simply, the real deal; the other is not.”
In the recent California Supreme Court decision legalizing gay marriage in the State of California, the justices concluded, “[gay] families are harmed when the state provides their families with lesser status and dignity.”
Do civil unions provide gay and lesbian families with “lesser status and dignity”?
Some basic facts:
1) Couples eligible to marry may have their marriage performed in any state and have it recognized in every other state in the nation and every country in the world. Marriage provides portability when families travel or move.
2) Couple who are joined in a civil union (lets say, in Vermont) have no guarantee that its protections will even travel with them to neighboring NY—let alone Texas or any other state.
3) While couples who have a civil union retain some legal rights, they are only state rights. They do not receive any of the more than 1,000 federal benefits and protections of marriage.
So should gays and lesbians welcome civil unions and the rights they bring and just accept the different name?
Yes and no.
If gays and lesbians live in a state where they are able to participate in a civil union and want to do so, they should. It will bring many of the same state rights heterosexual couples have in that state.
However, similar to the 1960’s when African Americans drank from separate water fountains and went to separate bathrooms but still protested their separation, so must gays and lesbians. Civil unions are not separate, but equal. They are separate and unequal.
While they provide many important state rights, their intent is to exclude gays and lesbians from marriage–to prevent gays and lesbians both federal marriage rights and the status “being married” brings.
That’s wrong.
Gay and lesbian relationships and families are just as important as every other committed relationship existing among two consenting adults.
Our country has tried separate before. It just doesn’t work.
Posted by: Chris Seelbach
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