Brian Griffin has a link saying Bush will probably support an amendment to define marriage as a union of a man and a woman. To Brian this makes President Bush a bigot. Not that him calling people bigots is that out of the ordinary, the word's appeared in his blog 36 times in the past month.
Being in favor of defining marriage a certain way is nowhere close to the same thing as being a bigot. There are plenty of reasons someone might be in favor of an amendment to define marriage without it being bigotry.
Throughout history marriage has been defined as a union between a man and a woman. Why should the courts be allowed to change that definition based on trumped up equal rights grounds? Homosexuals have the same right to marry someone of the opposite sex as heterosexuals have, and heterosexuals have the same limits preventing them from marrying someone of the same sex. The ability to marry whomever you please is not currently a right.
This is the text of the proposed amendment: "Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this constitution or the constitution of any state, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups."
Now we come to the part of my post where I ask a bunch of questions and answer them all “No.”
Would this proposed text ban civil unions? No. Would supporting this mean that somebody is opposed to the idea of civil unions? No.
Does George Bush support gay marriage? No, but then neither do John Kerry or John Edwards. Does this mean that they’re bigots? No, opposition to the redefinition of a word does not equate bigotry.
All that being said, if you want to add a system like civil unions, whereby loving homosexuals can commit themselves to one another, then I say go for it. The more people in committed relationships the better, but getting judges to make up non-existent rights and getting Mayors to break the law and calling everyone that isn’t 100% with you a bigot isn’t the way to go about it. If you want to do it right you’re going to need to go through the legislatures and try and win the people over.
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Instapundit
What exactly is the difference between a civil union and a civil marriage? Is it just that you want some verbal distinction, or would it actually award more benefits to be married?
Posted by: mstehlin at February 20, 2004 04:09 PMWell, technically it would depend on how each locality set it up, but every proposal I've seen for civil unions offers the same legal rights as your standard marriage.
Posted by: Rob Bernard at February 20, 2004 04:26 PMThen why have a distinction at all?
Posted by: mstehlin at February 21, 2004 08:36 AMBecause, as much as prospective rights might be similar, the union of two people of the same sex does not fall under the definition of marriage as it has been used for centuries. Truthfully I may not even be that opposed to calling it marriage if there was an honest to God debate over the merits of redefining the term marriage, but that's not what the pro-gay marriage people are trying to do.
They're trying to push through the idea that of course marriage can, and already does, include two people of the same sex and anyone who says differently is a bigot or a closet case. When you have Judges and Mayors and County Clerks trying to circumvent all debate on the matter you simply can't have the national conversation that I think would be required to decide and thus I think action may need to be taken to prevent those people from making an end run around the decision making process.
Posted by: Rob Bernard at February 21, 2004 10:20 AMMarriage has been redefined plenty of times. There used to be no interracial marriage in the US (and kudos to Alabama for finally changing that in 2000! gaw). Also, marriage used to be, in essence, the selling of a teenage daughter to a much older man.
Posted by: Goose at February 21, 2004 10:27 AMBefore and after each of those events marriage was still the union of a man and a woman. The end of bans on interracial marriages didn't come because marriage was redefined from a union of two people of the same race, it came because those bans didn't follow the actual definition of a union between a man and a woman.
Posted by: Rob Bernard at February 21, 2004 10:41 AMYes, it would ban civil unions.
"nor the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups"
Rob, you should read the text of things you cut and paste before stating that they mean exactly the opposite of the text.
Posted by: Covington at February 23, 2004 12:18 AMThere seems to be a great deal of debate over that second sentence. A great many very smart and unbigoted people can’t agree on whether it would outlaw civil unions. It seems to me it says that rights can’t be given to “unmarried” couples simply because the rights are given to married couples. Would this disallow giving similar rights to couples in another type of union? I don’t think so, but I think the wording should be cleared up and I wouldn’t support anything that would outlaw civil unions. Likewise there’s nothing to show that President Bush is in favor of outlawing civil unions. In fact he seems to be in favor of them, so long as they start at the state level and aren’t forced upon a state by the judiciary.
“[T]he position of this administration is that whatever legal arrangements people want to make, they're allowed to make, so long as it's embraced by the state, or does start at the state level.” -- http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/14/politics/campaigns/14MARR.html?ex=1077685200&en=307677307aebf52a&ei=5070
Posted by: Rob Bernard at February 23, 2004 12:45 AMBrian responds here: http://cincinnati.blogspot.com/2004_02_22_cincinnati_archive.html#107750908099304882
And I respond again here: http://www.robbernard.com/archives/000925.html
Posted by: Rob Bernard at February 23, 2004 04:31 AM