and for civil unions as a starting point….
Cultures are identified in part by their mores, but the fact that a culture is characterized by its traditions doesn’t mean that everybody in that culture agrees. This creates some of the stumbling blocks being encountered in the ongoing redefinition of rights in order to remove alleged violations of the Constitution against groups that don’t occupy the crests of various bell curves.
In the movement to extend the traditional and culturally accepted meaning of the concept of “marriage” the basic struggle is NOT over civil rights but is instead an effort by one group to force the other group to accept and endorse it’s commandeering of and restructuring of a cultural more.
Many who oppose the statutory establishment of “gay marriage” would have no problem with acknowledging the “right” of two people to establish a committed relationship resembling traditional marriage in the civil sense. The fact that the opposition is so passionate demonstrates that the conflict is over the word, not the relationship, and over demands that the nontraditional relationship be accepted and endorsed by those whose values and preferences preclude their accepting or endorsing it.
Want to make it all go away so everybody can go back to more mundane activities?
Simple.
Establish a legally acknowledged civil union that doesn’t infringe upon the traditions and cultural mores of the traditional marriage defenders, yet still provides the same “civil” rights and responsibilities provided by the traditional marriage.
Cultural acceptance and endorsement of “change” must evolve and develop over time, perhaps more than a generation or two. It has been proven many times that such things cannot be legislated. The society as a whole will decide issues of attitude and belief, issues very enmeshed with basic language itself.
Without the perceived assault on the integrity of a “word” that many hold to be quite sacred, I don’t think this issue would ever have made the front page in the first place.
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By a Damsite 