Excellent post, Mellow Julia. Your thought process describes the reason I feel that the "M" word is the source of all the trouble. The government has no business identifying a contractual agreement with legal standing by invoking a religious term.
While there are people like yourself that are willing to say "well, since civil unions are not the same as marriages and since I want equal rights for everyone then I guess we should allow everyone to marry" I'm not willing to accept that way. I'd rather partake in the long and costly fight to take the religious institution of marriage out of the political arena and have civil unions for everyone which give everone same rights.
Sure, the fight will be a lot longer and some people might say that I can afford to do that since I'm not gay and I don't plan on marrying anyone of my own gender... but tough luck. That's how I see it.
I wouldn't think of denying you your right to see it that way, kap. I'm expressing my opinion, not criticizing you for yours.
If we were still living in the days of American Apartheid, I would be similarly advocating for people of color to sit at White lunch counters, and I'd be sitting there with them. I wouldn't put you under any obligation to do so, and I'd be glad for whatever part you would play in the long and costly fight to make all lunch counters equally accessible to all people, even though as a White person you could afford to say "so what".
So I applaud your choice, kap. Please do partake of that fight!
