There is some (perhaps intangible) difference between civil union and marriage. Whatever it is, it makes the granting of civil union not equal to what others get from the state and thus, violates the intent of the court's ruling.

There is a simple solution to this: drop marriage as a state function. Two people who want to pledge to take care of each other (and any children) enter into a state-sanctioned contract. This contract gives all the rights and responsibilities that are granted by the current set up.

If these couples then want to be "married" they go to the religious group of their choice and have whatever ceremony performed that conforms to their tradition. If marriage is a "sacrament" then the state has no business being involved with it in any case.

This is not as radical as it sounds, many European countries have only civil arrangements that are validated by the state. This seems to work out just fine.

Let's just get the state out of the marriage business altogether. 

--- Policies not Politics
Daily Landscape

"Here's the big news: there's no big news." Good point. Of course, it's not Kansas, but one has to start somewhere. I've mixed feelings myself about marriage as a state function and about gay marriage as a rights imperative, for similar reasons. But with luck, more steps like this will over time make the idea of gay rights impossible for the wingnuts to turn into a weapon, and it reinforces one's hope that moving forward rather than compromising can have political value.

John

http://www.haberarts.com/

In what way is that less complicated? Are you perhaps presuming that it is easier because of the lack of equal rights attached to the civil unions.

Because otherwise, civil unions are more complicated ... it is necessary to go through the process of extending equal rights to people in civil unions situation by situation, at the federal and state level, tax code, inheritance, etc., and then spend money educating people to actually respect the rights that have been granted piecemeal fashion.

It may be that there are too many bigots to do things the easy way, and too many people that are happy to see respect for civil rights but not dedicated to fighting for that respect. But that does not change the fact that it is the easier solution to have a uniform state-sanctioned status, whether that is marriage or civil union - one box on the 1040, one box on the medical form, one determination to make at probate ... straight down the list.

It is in part precisely because the solution is too straightforward that the bigots fight against it ... they realize that if it gets put into place, in another five to ten years it will be impossible to get substantial numbers of people worried about it.

But the demand, after all, is for legal equality. Its already possible for gays to get married, its just not recognized by the state. And civil unions in the context of state sanctioned marriage provide for the same type of equality that seperate but equal education did in the days of Jim Crow.

That's not the point at issue. The argument was that gays should not press for equality for a decade or two.

So the question is, should black folks and other supporters of equal rights have set aside the demand for the end of segregation for 20 years while they fought for more and newer textbooks and better quality seats in the back of the bus?

Why not take one step first if that is likely to be in reach before the final goal could be met in a single transition? It may even result in the final goal being reached earlier, and in any case the discrimination and sufferings will diminish at once instead of in a distant future.

No reason why not. But that is quite a different suggestion than the one that gays should abandon the fight for equal rights for 10 or 20 years, and only push for improvements in their rights as second class citizens.

Not more than you are putting up a strawman.
What activists fight for and what a political party markets as short term goals do not have to be the same.

Given the obvious circumstances in America (including popular opinions that manywhere seem to be closest related to them in Poland), twenty years doesn't seem to me to be a very unlikely guess for how long time it would take to get popular approval for same-sex marriages.

In fact, I believe the time homosexuals, bisexuals, etc, would have to wait until the ultimate goal was reached would be shorter, not longer, if the step-by-step approach was preferred instead of the all-at-once. But that is only a belief and nothing one can say for sure.

What one can say for sure, however, is that a partial improvement can get political support faster than the whole package, and that this (Jim Crow or not) actually may be an improvement for them concerned that is well worthy of support, regardless of if the everything-at-once advocates call you bad things.

My last comment wasn't quite lucid.