Gay Marriage: Yes or No?

[dunno001]

TheRealMafoo said:

axumblade said:

You do know that most gays just want equal rights. I've been dating my bf for 4 years and it would be nice to actually call it official in a state of law.

Just want to point this out, because I never liked this way of thinking.

You have equal rights. I am not gay, and I can't marry a man either. You are gay, but you can still marry a woman. Thus we both have the same rights. That makes them equal.

We just both have less rights then we should. Both of us should be allowed to legally form a union with a man, even if I never chose to exercise that right.

I bring this up, because I hate the terms "gay rights", "women's rights", "minority rights" and so on. They are human rights. We all get them.

This works only if one thing were true: that all gay people choose to be gay. Since that statement clearly isn't true (I'm willing to be exhibit A if needbe), that means that there is a difference in our rights. As Seece said, you can marry who you love. We can't. Nor can we "love" a member of the opposite gender to get married to. Sure, we could marry that way, but what good would it do? We'd not be happy together- because that's not who we truely want to be with. I'd love to be able to call it "human rights", but alas, the seperation of so many things means that we are first fighting for our rights, "gay rights" in this case, just to be seen as equals in the law. Once we are truely equals, then I could see calling it human rights. Or I guess we could call it human rights... in the case of the lack of them- we're not seen as equal to a "normal" human.

Another thing I've seen in this thread, not related to the above post, is use of the word marriage. I'll say flat out- I have no problem ripping it out of all legal context. This way, the religious people can have their "sanctity of marriage" (though I would argue there are more damaging things to it that they ignore), and every couple can have legal recognition under the law. Call it whatever; I'm not a stickler for names. If anything, I've always felt that "church and state" were not truely seperated here. Bring us a step closer, and a step to people being able to be who they truely are and how they want to be. That latter part is still mired up in the religious parts of law... but that's another topic for another thread...