For those looking for the clearest answer to wing nuts, you can stop with Sara Whitman. Her A Separate Fountain entry on Huffington Post is the righteous reply. Without stretching at all, she puts the lie to those who contend that marriage equality is not a civil rights issue.
She's from Massachusetts and married to her wife for three years. She had spoken recently to a man who "told me that civil unions were an equal institution but that marriage is about religion...gay marriage was wrong. It was an argument of separate but equal, made by an African-American man. I wondered if the colored-only water fountains ever felt equal. Still a water fountain, after all. Just a separate one, so the purity of the white fountain would not be sullied...He was asking me to drink from another fountain. If marriage had no legal relevance and was only a religious symbol, I could go with it. But it doesn't. It is woven into the legal system, government benefits, and tax codes. It is a civil right. The laws and understanding of it comes about from years and years of legal precedents. It can't be replicated in a meaningful way...Civil unions, in other words, are still a separate fountain. "She hits it spot on in her call to defeat the anti-marriage-equality amendment here. Her personal blog is Suburban Lesbian Housewife.
The fountain post is well worth reading, saving and being prepared to regurgitate as useful.
Tags: massmarrier, Massachusetts, amendment, same sex marriage, ConCon, Sara Whitman, Huffington Post
1 comment:
Nice link-to, thanks. I agree. The whole "civil unions for You People, marriage for We The People" is really just a rehash of white flight. It is so obvious. But I suppose that since our country still hasn't really looked racist bigotry in the face, it will refuse to recognize this newfangled permutation for what it is.
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