Elton John, who’s been in a civil partnership with another man since 2005, had some words about why Prop 8 passed:
“What is wrong with Proposition 8 is that they went for marriage. Marriage is going to put a lot of people off, the word marriage.”
“I don’t want to be married. I’m very happy with a civil partnership. If gay people want to get married, or get together, they should have a civil partnership,” John says. “The word ‘marriage,’ I think, puts a lot of people off.
“You get the same equal rights that we do when we have a civil partnership. Heterosexual people get married. We can have civil partnerships.” [from USA Today]
So, then if gay couples who enter a civil partnership aren’t married, how do we refer to them? Civil partnered?
Is this really a ridiculous, semantical debate about the ownership of the word “marriage”? Since when has bigotry been so petty?
What John’s quotes don’t reflect is the sentiment among the anti-gay marriage crowd is that being gay in itself is either immoral, unnatural, a choice, a disease, or a combination of all four. Perhaps John is totally aware of this, but is willing to settle for a “seperate but equal” legal definition over what is technically the same thing?
2 responses so far ↓
frazgo // November 13, 2008 at 10:35 am |
I heard that this morning and was shocked at first. The I stepped back and realized he didn’t live here in the 60’s when the segregation laws were torn down and “seperate but equal” was shown not to work at all.
I know some of the more moderates are advocating accepting “civil union” now and then work to the marriage part.
I disagree. I actually was happy to hear this morning LA County Atty Rocky Degaldio came out stating the county the was joining the fracass to over turn the result on the belief Prop 8 was an amendment to the CA Constitution needing a 2/3 vote. If they can prove their case and prevail that will send some ripples all over.
nuffSaid // December 3, 2008 at 6:22 pm |
John has is exactly right. Equality has never been about making different parties become the same thing and no longer different, it’s about granting different parties equal rights and privileges. Like he said by law all types of registered domestic partnerships already have equal rights. A partnership between a man and a woman IS very different from a same sex partnership – 50% of the union is an entirely different gender. Since these partnerships are inherently different they need different names. You never see afro-american people campaigning to be called caucasian.
When it comes to people believing that homosexuality is wrong… Reflecting any type of sentiment is not illegal. And if you are interested in forcing people to believe a certain way then what you are talking about is not called freedom.