Renaming Marriage

[Jamzack]

Starting this after reading a thread in another forum Fish of Doom sent me over gay marriage debates in California and I'm interested.

the summing up is: Remove the word "marriage" from government recognized unions and use a catch-all phrase to make all of them equal. I'll try my best to explain the reasoning but it'll probably get messy:

The idea was that the objection to gay marriages comes from the definition of marriage as between a man and woman as defined by the bible (in the West at least) clashing with the modern secular form of union that is still labeled a "marriage", and also that creating civil partnerships as the UK and others have done is a false image of equality. so an alternative would be to call every government recognized partnership something new such as union of couples or whatever.

The forum is full of intelligent people so the exact details were sort of hard for me to grasp sometimes but the idea was this would get rid of the ingrained idea that gay couple can't "marry" as its a heterosexual union but would allow a legally recognized bond that isn't named differently to heterosexual couples. There was also arguements that the opposition to marriage comes from the religious definition but marriages nowadays are by no means a purely religious institution.

Ok not sure if thats clear I'll get Fish to have a look and flame me/ clear it up for me later but what do people think of the idea?

Link to thread is here: http://forums.relicnews.com/showthread.php?p=3901423#post3901423 (not sure on TOS for linking other forums so sorry if tis not allowed)

Personally I like it but I can in no way see the removal of marriages, even if its just a rename, being accepted at least not by this generation.

Soooo ideas? thoughts? random mutterings?

[Up4answers]

It's a civil partnership over here not marriage. Don't see the difference.
Just trying to please religious people in a country devoid of religion seems daft to me
It's the commitment made not the wording that matters

[Tedi♥]

A marriage to me is two people declaring love for each other and committing to a long term relationship in which they support each other and make a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.
Gay people can do that as well as hetero couples (or probably even better than in some cases).

Most of the time anything else is pretty much thinly veiled homophobia.

[Sakky]

When you say its a civil partnership do you mean the gay one or thats actually the term for a secular marriage regardless of whose involved?

If its the first one then the problem was that its unfair to call them different things I know I personally dont see civil partnerships as equal to marriage however they're recognised in a legal sense and making it the same thing for all would also stop all the crap about gay adoption as an added bonus.

If its the latter then im a twit

[Emssssssssss]

No it's the former. I still call it marriage as I don't think just because they're gay they should have all the fun

[MiSH]

The issue with changing the term is that every piece of legislation that uses the word marriage has to be amended to use the new word. Do you have any idea how long that would take and how much it would cost?

How about the Church changes the word they use?

[i_need_ice]

They could start using the original Hebrew/Aramaic term instead. Or they could stop being homophobic asshats and just stop their bitching.

[DJTwigz]

Maybe they'd accept it if it included underage boys as well as adults

[Chicharronnesss[:]

If "other people" want marriage changed to something else, then they should feel free to make up their own ceremony and values and stuff like that. It should never alter the values of standard marriage. The whole idea of removing marriages is utter codpoo swang about probably by the same hand wringing loony lefties who mooted "winterval".

[AllmanBrothers]

I didn't understand this bit - why are civil partnerships a false image of equality? Do they lack any of the legal standings or beneifts of marriage?