“Marriage or nothing” does a whole lot of damage to real people, especially when you’re talking about Wyoming, where there’s no real prospect of gay marriage. On the other hand, if you’d criticize Hawai’i for passing civil unions and ot marriage, that’d be understandable.

But at any rate, there are something like 190 countries in the world besides the US and Israel, and recognition of same-sex relationships (under whatever name) would be a matter of bilateral agreement between the US and any individual country.

vs.

No country has ever recognized another countries civil unions or domestic partnerships.

As I will illustrate in a soon commentary, both of these are factually incorrect.

No country has ever recognized another countries civil unions or domestic partnerships. Many countries have recognized other countries same sex marriages. Once again, marriage is superior to civil unions or domestic partnerships. Your attempts to spin this as some countries being willing to acknowledge civil unions or domestic partnerships but not marriage falls flat on its face.

The Mass. marriage would be more easily recognized than the California DP in countries that recognize same-sex marriages, such as Israel.

Actually, that would be up to the discretion of the Israelis — they could quite reasonably choose to recognize neither the Mass. marriages nor the Cal. DPs so long as the US Federal government recognizes neither one.

Or, if Federal DPs became reality in the US, the Israeli government could choose to recognize those relationships as being on the same footing as Norwegian SSMs, completely ignoring the terminological difference between “marriage” and “DP” — again, that’s up the discretion of Israel.

And in principle, a foreign government where the Catholic Church (for example) has a lot of political pull could choose to recognize same-sex DPs/CUs from other countries, but NOT to recognize same-sex marriage from other countries (in order to legally accommodate gay couples while still showing some deference to religious sentiments).

But at any rate, there are something like 190 countries in the world besides the US and Israel, and recognition of same-sex relationships (under whatever name) would be a matter of bilateral agreement between the US and any individual country.

Thus, I don’t find the “international portability” argument to be a very compelling reason for saying that DPs/CUs are inferior to SSM — American DPs/CUs would be fully “portable” to any country that chooses to recognize them, while American SSMs would be totally non-portable to countries unwilling to recognize them.

If civil unions really were the equivalent of marriage the opponents would have no problem calling them marriage. That they are unwilling to do so proves they are not as good. Further, with two different types of unions there is no guarantee that future changes to marriage laws will automatically be mirrored in the supposedly equal civil unions, in fact its highly unlikely they would be.

The Mass. marriage would be more easily recognized than the California DP in countries that recognize same-sex marriages, such as Israel.

But I also insist that the word marriage has a special cachet for much the same that the word f*ck is dirty: because of a general consensus among native English speakers that marriage is “special” and the F-word is “dirty.” But neither word gets its peculiar quality from the fiat of the government (or the Grand High Council of Dictionary Editors) — nor will this ever be the case.

And if the general majority consensus turns out to be that heterosexual Marriage is real and special but homosexual “Marriage” is a phony-baloney gummint construct requiring scare quotes, then how exactly is having Marriage more advantageous to us than having Federal Domestic Partnership (i.e., assuming that all the rights/privileges that CAN be created by fiat are there)??

To put it another way, I think that DPs/CUs and the rights they confer are worth fighting for whether the hetero majority wants it or not. But I don’t see any added value to having SSM unless and until it can win in popular referendums.

No, it’s not equality

How is a Civil Union that’s recognized in California (but not recognized by the Federal government or 40+ other states) one whit “less equal” than a Marriage that’s recognized in Massachusetts (but not recognized by the Federal government or 40+ other states)?

I fully agree that equality should be our goal and that we lack equality now; but I maintain that “civil unions” or “domestic partnerships” that were recognized in all 50 states and by the Federal government (and including such important spousal privileges as the ability to sponsor a foreign-national partner for a green card, etc.) would be equality.

I also maintain that our gay tendency to disparage CUs/DPs as “second class” while frenetically chasing after the word “marriage” is little more than a superstition we have talked ourselves into by repeatedly chanting about “Jim Crow!” and “Separate Is Not Equal!” in fashionable imitation of all the other gay people who are chanting “Jim Crow, Separate Is Not Equal!” (While ignoring such trifling realities as the fact that many Jim Crow states imposed mandatory segregation on private businesses, and was not merely a policy about government-owned facilities; and furthermore that Jim Crow involved the sharing — or not sharing — of finite tangibles such as city buses and school buildings, so that every building designated “all white” meant one less building available for black schoolchildren. Which is to say there was a “zero sum” aspect to racial segregation that simply doesn’t exist when you’re talking about, e.g., medical Power of Attorney, which isn’t an exhaustible commodity.)

And this superstitious infatuation with a word may make for good cheerleading to rile up the Gay Crowd and get us to pull out our wallets, but it does have a real-world negative cost: it creates a disincentive for “moderate conservatives” who oppose SSM to support CUs/DPs, and thereby distance themselves from the hardcore religious right that would prefer to see us have no legal recognition at all.