If there was no difference why would so called allies fight so hard to create an entirely different "category" for same sex couples who seek full marriage rights - word and all?
Interesting debate within conservative circles, where the benefits of marriage equality are acknowledged by writers like openly gay, but conservative, Jonathan Rauch.
Still...the far right like Satanorum :puke: keep flogging this even though there is no logical reason aside from bigotry to deny marriage equality.
This article was written over a year ago... ?
Special Report: The Same-Sex Marriage Debate
Issue Page: Gay Marriage
Event: A Conversation on Gay Marriage with Andrew Sullivan and Gerard Bradley
Thursday, April 24, 2008
The debate over same-sex marriage in the United States is a contentious one, and advocates on both sides continue to work hard to make their voices heard. To explore the case for gay marriage, the Pew Forum has turned to Jonathan Rauch, a columnist at The National Journal and guest scholar at The Brookings Institution. Rauch, who is openly gay, also authored the 2004 book Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America.
A counterargument explaining the case against same-sex marriage is made by Rick Santorum :puke: a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and a former U.S. senator.
http://pewforum.org/events/?EventID=179Why is marriage – I’m sorry, why is same-sex marriage good for America?
Well, you got the question right the first time. It’s “why is marriage good for America?” Same-sex marriage is good for all the same reasons. It’s good for gay people. I think if you asked straight people who have been married or hope to get married to imagine life without marriage, it’s very hard to imagine. It’s a much lonelier, much more vulnerable life.
Gay people need all the same safety. They need the same caregiving anybody else does. A society with successful marriages – and a lot of them – is a more stable, safer, more successful society. America’s problem is not too many marriages, it’s too few. Gay people are asking to be part of this social contract – to care for each other so society doesn’t have to.
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The signal we need to send now is that everybody should be getting married. The big cultural problem with the family in America is not that gay people want to get married – it’s that straight people are not getting married or not staying married. And to me, one of the important cultural effects of gay marriage will be to send a very strong signal that marriage is something that is available to and expected of everybody, not just a few.
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But all gay people are asking for now is the one thing that we lack but that all straight people already have – they don’t need to give themselves anything more. And that’s the opportunity to marry some person – one person – that we love. Right now, we can’t marry anybody. The set is the null set for us. That’s not true of straight people who want multiple husbands or multiple wives. That’s not true of people who want to marry their mother; they can have 4 billion marriage partners except their mother. So, ultimately, I think those arguments, although well intended, are primarily a red herring.
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Marriage is not like voting, something the government just gives you at the stroke of a pen by fiat. Marriage must be a community institution to have its full power, which is to make couples actually closer. It actually fortifies and not just ratifies relationships. Your marriage has to be recognized by your community, your friends, your family, your kids’ teachers, your co-workers, all of the people around you as a marriage with all of the expectations and social support that goes with that. The law can’t give you that. That comes from community and that’s something gay couples are going to have to build by showing, as I think we are in Massachusetts, that we can be good marital citizens, that we’re not hurting anybody else’s marriage.
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Question: Let’s assume that same-sex marriage eventually becomes the norm in America. Are there any downsides for gays and lesbians?
No. No, I see none at all. For gays and lesbians, I see only an upside. I see an opportunity to join in the most healthgiving, beneficial social institution that’s ever been invented by humanity. I see the prospect for young people to grow up assuming that they will have families and connections to their community that have been denied to gay people for thousands of years. I see no downside at all for gay people.