On Wed, 12 Nov 2008, Dennis Claxton wrote:
>> But surely the idea of a civil union is to confer those legal rights on
>> couples in a recognised civil union? So the question is, what's the
>> difference, in law, between a civil union and a marriage?
>
> It's explained at the link I sent.
Yes, but as that link explained, so long as we have DOMA, there isn't really any difference legally. DOMA keeps the federal govt. from recognizing state sanctioned same-sex marriages as legally binding. So gay married folks don't get any federal rights any more than civil unionists do. So long as there is DOMA, civil unions and gay marriage are equal in rights terms, and they both equally fall many rights shy of heterosexual marriage.
I think, as Doug said, the real difference between the two is not about rights. It's about the magic of words, the performative power by which "I do" creates one of the oldest and strongest social institutions out of thin air. It's about the symbols of the ring exchange and the clothes and the honeymoon and the feasting and the witnessing. It's a magic in which which gay people, bless their hearts, believe in more than anybody except fundamentalists. It's palpable in the ceremonies. People were ecstatic getting married in San Francisco's Town Hall even when it conferred no rights at all. But when a state passes a civil union law, nobody dances in the streets. It's missing that magic.
That's of course what makes it such a problem. It's about magical thinking on both sides. If it was just about rights, the better way would surely be to pass civil union laws at the federal level, which would run into much less resistance and confer hundreds more rights than state level marriages do now. But that's not really what excites the desires of the movement so there's no point in talking about it.
As for Bill Bartlett's original question that what's wrong with gay marriage is that it will force churches to marry people against their will, that's just flat wrong. No church is forced to marry anyone now they don't want to. That's just the magical thinking of the right -- the fervent belief that somehow letting gay people say these magical words will strike the world upside down and break open the graves and churches.
Michael