Two state supreme courts (California and Connecticut) have ruled that passing civil unions is evidence of bias and discrimination against gay people -- the rational for striking down marriage laws and imposing gay marriage. A three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit agreed.
This is sad, because many people would like to provide legal protections for gay couples while protecting marriage as the union of husband and wife.
Will Illinois courts rule out civil unions as well?
The gay and lesbian civil rights movement in Illinois has long worked on forging a legislative path to marriage equality, buoyed last year by the passage of a law allowing same-sex civil unions.
But with uncertainty about a gay marriage bill moving through Springfield any time soon — the House bill introduced this year was pulled midway through the session — advocates are opening up a new path.
The gay rights group Lambda Legal and the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois each plan to file a lawsuit Wednesday against the clerk of Cook County, claiming that not issuing marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples violates the equal protection and due process clauses of the Illinois Constitution.
Activists say they will continue to press lawmakers to legalize same-sex marriage. But these lawsuits mean that the judicial system, and possibly the Illinois Supreme Court, will play a role as well. -- Chicago Tribune
12 Comments
"'No one really understands what a civil union is,' Volpe added. 'Our daughter had to explain that to her classmates. We shouldn't have to explain that. Our daughter shouldn't have to explain that.'"
How does the daughter explain that she has "two mommies"? And how is any of this a justification for redefining marriage without the approval of the people?
SSMers tried the Washington, New York, and Maryland Supreme Courts to force ssm on those states, failed in all three courts, and then went to the legislature. With Illinois, this process has been inverted. They tried the legislature, seem to be failing, and so will try the court.
I think the idea that civil unions are a compromise is pretty much dead. Thus, SSMers shouldn't whine when a state like North Carolina passes a marriage amendment that also bans civil unions.
I'll just add that it seems SSMers are trying to redefine reality. They really believe (or are claiming to believe) that there is no difference between families with a man and woman, and one with two men or two women.
"'After having a civil union for a year now, it just kind of defined even more the differences between our family and other families who are married,' Santos said."
Another story featured on this blog was one where a young lady testified in New Jersey that her "two dads" not being able to marry makes it difficult for her to discuss her family with her classmates.
As if marriage will change any of that. The marriage of this little boy's "two moms" didn't change reality for him:
"Kids have laughed at Tommy when they learn about his two moms. Kids are kids, sure, but he’s also witnessed strangers ask Abbie and me the question, 'Who’s the mother?' and he’s seen them grow silent and uncomfortable when we answer, 'We both are.'"
http://www.salon.com/2012/03/24/my_son_the_straight_boy/
The government lying and saying that opposite-sex and same-sex couples are the same cannot erase real differences, or society's perceptions of those differences.
I truly hope that LGBTs understand that nothing can erase reality. If they don't understand this now, they'll be severely disappointed in the future. Or they'll further impose on society so that no one is allowed to openly take note of reality. Perhaps a Harrison Bergeron type of dystopia where everyone is "equal."
"SSMers shouldn't whine when a state like North Carolina passes a marriage amendment that also bans civil unions."
They whine because all avenues of implementation of their agenda were cut off. To quote quite a few pro-SSMers:
"North Carolinians just put an end to a conversation we needed to have."
Translation:
Drat’s; foiled again.
There has never been a right for treating different things the same. Here we go again: Same-sex couples are not the same as male-female couples; as such, it is right and just for the government to treat them differently.
Men and women make babies and create families; same-sex couples do not make babies and create groups of unrelated people including babies who have been taken away from at least one parent. Does society believe that the latter instance is worthy of the same treatment as the former? Does society want to encourage the orphaning of children so that same-sex couples can imitate heterosexual couples?
The saddest part here is that the nominal defendants(either state or county officials) will make little to no effort to defend the law, and may actually attack it- just like Obama,
The ACLU are a bunch of preverts! They have destroyed the state of Maryland with their protections for criminals.
Civil unions was the five year incubation period the pseudo-marriage movement needed to boil the frogs fully.
Thank God they became impatient and showed their hand after Prop 8.
If there ever were grounds to suppose a decent accommodation could be made on civil unions grounds, there certainly are no such grounds any longer.
If it's got to be all or nothing, then so be it. High time to repeal *all* previous legislation benevolently enacted in this respect.
@Ash
Exactly.
"This is sad, because many people would like to provide legal protections for gay couples while protecting marriage as the union of husband and wife."
Sad for who? Certainly not the NOM staff that wrote that line of bull... NOM opposes civil unions whenever they're on the table and support constitutional amendments that prohibit them.
That's because every time civil unions are put into law, someone sues saying its not equal treatment and demanding SSM. Civil unions are a trojan horse because the gay activists will not be satisfied till they get full marriage and force acceptance on everyone. That would be why NOM doesn't consider it an option.
Pres. BHO is going to back himself into a corner with his waffley "stance" - because he won't support DOMA and says that the states should decide. But the DOMA is the law that actually allows the states to decide and keep their decision in force. If SSM couples go over state lines to "marry" and come back to other states that don't allow SSM they sue and force it on the whole state. He thinks he can have it both ways. It's clearly a ruse on his part.
The SSMers have failed to justify merging non-marriage with marriage -- under whatever name (civil union being just one version of the trojan horse gambit).
Ash's comment point to the problem of the SSM campaign's corruptive influence on society.
Morally, we are forbidden to treat people differently arbitrarily; but the flipside is that we are forbidden to treat people the same arbitrarily.
Civil union (as a merger with marital status) is an example of treating different types of relationships the same, arbitrarily.
They do not really seek equality because they demand that marriage be made to mean less and less and less until is so deeply demoted that marriage is deemed the emotional equiavalent of nonmarriage. And based on emotional equivalence, the law must impose a moral equivalence that cannot be transgressed lest the supremacy of gay identity politics be brought into doubt.
Civil union is not a viable alternative. Not morally and not legally. Early on, some people thought that the SSM issue would just go away if only this alternative was embedded -- an alternative name for the merger of marriage with non-marriage. But that just kicks the can down the road -- and not too far down the road.
Society may justly discriminate between marriage and other types of relationships. The law does not create marriage; the marital type of relationship justifies the marriage law's existence. Merging with non-marriage removes the basis for a marriage law. Thus, post-merger, marital status would be sustained only via the arbitrary exercise of governmental authority over all of civil society.
And yet that directly contradicts the pro-SSM rhetoric and argumentation for civil union in the first place -- and for SSM -- for the merger.