This NYT story has some relevant insight into the civil union versus marriage debate. It seems that in practice, it isn’t very hard to call civil unions marriages:
Marcie Horowitz and Margaret Maloney of Westfield, partners for 22 years, stood near a display of tiaras and flower girl dresses as they discussed their upcoming ceremony. Ms. Malone noted that no one at the convention hall was referring to the ceremonies as civil unions.
“Everyone’s saying marriage or wedding,” she said.
Now, if they gave exactly the same legal rights and benefits, I can see why it would still be offensive for the official name to be civil union and not marriage. But if they didn’t give the primary right of marriage, and everyone accepted that attempting to have children together would be unethical, I would think that it wouldn’t be offensive at all for the official name to be different. That doesn’t mean people can’t call them marriages, and it seems that everyone does.
It would really help the candidates if they didn’t have this albatross to struggle with. If Massachusetts rolled back marriage for same-sex couples and turned them into civil unions that were defined as being exactly like marriage but without marriage’s conception rights, it wouldn’t change a thing for any Massachusetts couple, but it would greatly increase the chances of extending equal protections and benefits across the country and recognizing civil unions federally. And everyone will still call them marriages, it won’t hurt anyone at all. Just accept that same-sex conception is unethical and unsafe and in exchange help out the candidates, and help out same-sex couples across the country. It hurts couples across the country for you to cling to conception rights. Love makes a family, genetic engineering is not required.
Perhaps I’m just that narcassistic.
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Civil unions and marriages are NOT the same thing. People who call civil unions marriages do so because, guess what, they want to be married. By creating a seperate legal entity for them, seperate and unequal btw, it just goes to show that they just don’t have what they truly want and deserve. There are a number of key differences between civil unions and marriages. For example, if I fell in love with someone in my dorm – the international dorm on campus (the only reason why I’m in the building is because I’m friends with an RA) – and eventually had a civil union with that person, I wouldn’t be able to get that person American citizenship. You need to be married to do that. Another bad one is pensions – if your spouse dies, you may not have access to their pension, whereas you would if married. Heck, even as the law is currently constituted, people can’t get federal pensions in Massachusetts even with a marriage certificate.
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There are literally almost a thousand legal differences between civil unions and marriage – I’m not going to go over them all. You can google the issue and learn a lot more. However, I will tackle one last issue: blatant homophobia in your post. Why shouldn’t gay people be able to have kids. Heck, skip that question for now – how in the world is it unsafe? I can’t even think up FAKE reasons. How is adopting, artificial insemination or surrogacy any less safe than what heterosexual couples are doing now? You don’t have babies differently if you’re gay. Finally, statistics have proven the “mom and dad = best” family situation wrong – any loving parents are better than none and two are better than none. However, statistic after statistic has shown that the sex of the parents doesn’t matter, so long as the households are loving and secure. You don’t have any idea what you’re talking about. I know college students who were raised in households with gay parents: they are GREAT people who have had great lives, with great, loving parents.
seems to think that reproduction, or even sex, requires marraige to be legal. I don’t understand where it comes from, but there it is.
My point is that marriage guarantees a right to conceive, that every marriage ever in history (and I’m currently reading Stephanie Coontz’s book, which totally supports me) has had a right to conceive children together. Different cultures and eras have had different legal consequences for fornication and illegitmate conception, but they have all had the same guarantee of conception rights for marriages. And no, not every couple has conception rights, and every single couple that doesn’t is not allowed to marry.
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Same-sex couples should not have conception rights. Stop demanding the right for same-sex couples to conceive together, and it will be a big step forward to giving same-sex couples equal protections and benefits via civil unions.
wasn’t from Lynne, it was from me. She keeps logging in on my computer and then not logging out. (sigh)
I thought most people here understood by now that I am talking about genetic engineering so that two women or two men can have a baby together, related to both of them. Not artificial insemination or adoption, which are natural conception, and would be unaffected by an egg and sperm law. Same-sex conception requires genetic engineering, and yes, it is being developed and many people are claiming a right to attempt it, many same-sex couples want to be able to have children that are related to both partners. But it is unsafe and should not be allowed, and there are safe alternatives, such as adoption, etc. All genetic engineering should be prohibited, only natural conception, meaning a man’s unadultereated gamete joining with a woman’s unadulterated gamete, should be allowed.
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And what civil unions are you talking about? The civil unions I am suggesting would be defined to be exactly like marriages, including all of the citizenship and inheritance rights, except for one thing: they would not guarantee the couple the right to attempt to conceive together. That would be the only difference.
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And it has nothing to do with parenting, I’m 100% only talking about conception rights. People should only have the right to conceive with someone of the other sex, and marriage’s conception rights should be preserved, so that every marriage is allowed to attempt to conceive children together.
your proposed law, but wouldn’t outlawing the proceedure itself without reference to couples (SS, maried or otherwise) cover your legal goal. I don’t understand the need to define a separate legal status for certain types of marraiges when defining a separate legal status for certain types of medical procedures will do. By going out of your way to bring marraige status into it you subvert any medical argument you bring up and offend people to boot.
I have two legal goals, one is to prevent genetic engineering, the other is to preserve everyone’s natural conception rights. Preventing genetic engineering is best done not by outlawing individual procedures one at a time such as SCNT, but with a blanket prohibition on all forms of conception that are not natural, which means everything except a man’s sperm fertilizing a woman’s egg. This is the proposal of the President’s Council on bioethics, and similar Missouri’s Stem Cell Initiative that passed last November (actually it prohbited implanting but not creating embryos any other way than egg and sperm). So, just enacting an egg and sperm law like that would achieve the first goal of stopping genetic engineering, you are correct.
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But anyone can see the obvious: Preventing genetic engineering means that people can only conceive with someone of the other sex, that only both sex couples would have a right to conceive, that same-sex couples would be prohibited from conceiving together. Even if we were to call same-sex unions marriages, they wouldn’t have equal rights, they would be lacking the most basic right of every marriage, the right that has always been guaranteed by marriage since marriage was invented. So, that should be acknowledged and taught: hetero couples would have a right that same-sex couples don’t, a right that is perhaps the most basic civil right of man.
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Calling them marriages would change marriage, everyone’s marriage, and this is where we get into my second goal: If we allow same-sex marriages but prohibit genetic engineering, then that would mean that marriage no longer guarantees a couples right to attempt to conceive together using their own gametes. And conception rights are not guaranteed by anything else except inexplicitly by the definition of mariage. If marriage is so changed, it is possible that an IVF clinic could refuse to help a married couple where one of the parents carried a gene for some disease, and it is possible that we could force married people to use donor gametes. Eventually we might decide to repeal the egg and sperm law and allow people to modify the genes of their children, but the damage will have already been done to marriage, so we might force couples to use GE to improve their babies. Most likely this will be in the form of social pressure rather than a law, it will be seen as wrong to have a substandard baby using their own bad genes. But as long as marriage continues to guarantee a right to conceive together, and as long as everyone has a right to marry the person of their choice (exceptions for certain public relationships only), then people will still be able to have their natural children.
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Also, by dealing with it at the same time as marriage, we can address what we want for equal protections and benefits for same-sex couples at the same time. The coalition between people opposed to genetic engineering and people in favor of equal protections for same-sex couples is huge, but the people who “own” these issues don’t want a moderate middle to resolve it for them. Plus, there is already a silent coalition of eugenicists and gay couples who want to be allowed to do genetic engineering. We shouldn’t let the geneticists take advantage of gay couples desires to have a baby this way though, it is really unethical, nor should be let scientists be used by gay couples. We have to step in here and protect children and protect everyone’s conception rights.
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Oh, but you have, John. You have.
Isn’t it surprising Sharoney that Ryan could be so wrong about what I am talking about, considering how much I’ve posted this over and over? Apparently it takes many patient posts to get the concept across. Do you understand Sharoney?
I just hope I never run into you in person.
Maybe she doesn’t care if same-sex couples have real security or federal recognition, at least not soon. But there are same-sex couples that are old enough for federal recognition to really matter to them, and couples that need the security of other states recognizing their union. Or, maybe she insists on developing genetic engineering techniques so that same-sex couples can have bio-related children like a man and a woman do.
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We won’t know, because she doesn’t explain, she just wants to censor this comment.
with a wide bigoted streak. ya think?
It isn’t bigoted to be opposed to genetic engineering. And it’s not perverted either. And seeing as I am the only person with a freakin plan to give same-sex couples equal protections and benefits right now, it is perverted of you to prefer genetic engineering over equality.
most of the gay people have decided to abandon BMG after getting tired of David throwing his weight behind the “harmless” process liberal stuff as the owner of this group. John Howard, you’re basically pretty much having a conversation with yourself. Don’t confuse very few responding to you with winning over the people that are most affected by this.
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But’s it’s only gay people’s futures that are being affected, not the people that tend to wax poetic about what is best for them when they often don’t even have to live with the consequences.
And look at how gay people’s future would be affected by my proposal: They would get federal recognition, and other states would be much more likely to enact civil unions, so gay couples in Massachusetts would have much more equal protections and benefits. And the only thing they would give up is the right – right now – to attempt genetic engineering. Is it really so important to you that you have that right right now, today? That’s what you are insisting on. Doesn’t love make a family, MEM? What do you need biologically related children for, especially when it puts them at huge risk of birth defects? Think! This proposal is the best way to get equal protections and benefits for gay couples.
Bored.
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I simply suspect that most of us find your fixation on the procreative activities of gay people just plain creepy, to put it politely, and choose to move on. I know I usually do.
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You’ve posted endless variations on this theme again and again. It’s getting old. Can’t you find something else, anything else at all to say about Massachusetts politics without bringing your pet obsession into it?
And the right of a marriage to marry must be guaranteed. It’s freaking me out how obstinant and stubborn all of you are. I’m presenting a plan to gain equal protections and benefits for same sex couples right now, but you aren’t interested in it, because you would rather have the right to hire a lab to create a baby for you out of their test tubes and dna synthesis machines. It’s not getting old, it hasn’t even started yet. For 5 billion years it has been natural, and soon it will be done according to some random computer programmer’s random whim. This is too significant a point in history for you to get bored. It’s a simple choice: preserve natural conception rights and our right to choose who we want to conceive a child with, or change over to manufacture of people according to government regulated corporate labs out for profit and fame and control.
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You are scared, but do not fear. Love makes a family, you don’t need genetic engineering to have a loving family.
i mean, “the right of a marriage to conceive must be guaranteed”.
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I hope everyone agrees with that? Or is anyone going to go on the record disagreeing with that?
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Wow. Just…. wow. And you know this how?
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You know nothing about me, my life, or my procreation history — if any. (And I’m glad that’s the case, because you and your creepy obsession freaks me out.)
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I’m done with you.
I don’t think you do understand me, because what I am talking about has never been done by anyone, yet. It’s only been done in mice so far. Anything you have done would still be just as legal as it is now after passing the egg and sperm law.
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Either admit that you insist on same-sex conception rights, or say you don’t need same-sex conception rights. If you don’t need same-sex conception rights, USE THAT to advance the cause of getting what you DO need. You do want equal protection as soon as possible, don’t you? Or do you want conception rights?
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I’ll be done when genetic engineering is stopped and natural conception rights are guaranteed.
and not a single person as recommended this post. Not one.
I’m shocked. Just shocked. Shocked I tell you.
I also notice that people just insult me and then drop out of the discussion before they’ve understood what I am proposing. Clearly there is still lots of misunderstanding. People are being very close-minded.
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I need someone to risk being ostracized by agreeing that genetic engineering isn’t necessary for gay people to have equal rights. Someone to prod people into changing their priorities.
Let me guess John . . .
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Rather than engage you everyone here is calling you “creepy” right?
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Rather than debate you people here say things like “I’m done with you” right?
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And of course no BMG topic would be complete if we didn’t have Laurel accusing someone of being a Bigot.
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Same story…just the start of a new week at the BMG that’s all
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yeah, same old story, you’re right. This is a really important issue though, i’d hope that after a few exposures to the concept, people would begin to see how big it is. Really, there has never been a bigger issue, but people are seriously messed up, they seem to want biotech to control and manufacture people, maybe they are just fascinated with science fiction becoming real, or maybe they have lost their faith in their own worthiness to have children, or maybe lost their belief in equal rights for other people to have children. Thanks for a supportive post.