Check out the humorous ads sponsored by Blue Jersey and Garden State Equality at http://bluejersey.co… (choose the “see the ads” tab – for some reason I can’t get the link to appear here correctly). They do a great job of showing how civil unions don’t offer the rights, protections and respect provided by full marriage equality.
If you haven’t contacted your legislators here in Mass. to express your support for marriage equality, please do so now! MassEquality had a poster up at the Democratic Convention last weekend showing the anti-marriage legislators – many were Democrats. If enough of them don’t come to their senses, they’ll allow the majority to vote to take away rights from a minority – a terrible precedent. They’ll also be handing the right wing an issue to galvanize their voters and donors and use against our national candidates in a Presidential election year. A vote on marriage isn’t just bad policy, it’s bad politics. If you haven’t already told your legislators where you stand, now is the time.
You can check how your legislators voted on MassEquality’s website: http://www.massequal…
to me there is something even more fundamental in the CU vs. marriage argument than the federal rights differences this ad discusses. if the intent isn’t to discriminate, why create a whole new CU system at all, and why is it only open to gay people? CUs are by definition discriminatory, even when they encompass all the state-level bennies of marriage. oh, and to boot, they don’t work. they are not respected like real marriages in a distressing percentage of cases in NJ. and NJ was not new to mini marriages for gays – they cut their teeth on DPs. or they were supposed to. but they didn’t. CUs are discriminatory to both gays and straights, fall tragically short in legal benefits, and aren’t respected as the mini marriage they were intended to be. answer? cut the discriminatory crap and make civil marriage equal.