Some believe that there is an incremental acceptance of rights not unsimilar to what the African-American struggle entailed. It goes from decriminalisation of sodomy to registered domestic partnerships to civil unions and to marriage rights on a state then eventually a federal level first for civil unions and then for marriage.

Others believe that the enshrinement of second-tier civil unions is all the majority will legislate for you here. It will be by state and the federal law will come when they can enshrine your inferiority with a constitutional amendment to deny you marriage without amending the document. Prohibition is the only such amendment passed and repealed in your history.

In Canada, a few provinces had a type civil union statute, but when others reached marriage first, the others dominoed into marriage and the federal law passed within a two year period.

Spain and South Africa had a situation that began with incarceration under right wing regimes to full marriage rights under socialist and left wing regimes. Belgium is nothing short of a miracle and the Netherlands….LOL is the Nederland.

Look at Sweden in their fight for incrementalism.
The courageous act of the Lutheran Church of Sweden is nothing short of proof that there is a Christian response to the Christofascists. Look at the UK and others who are fighting for first tier rights and their struggles.

The last fight is for adoption and surrogacy rights. This fight took longer in Spain than anywhere else to fix, but are now fixed.

Now, California. Isn’t it shameful that this man has said, go to the courts, and then to the legislature, twice, and still no marriage law. The RDP and dual parent adoption is enough for the nephew-in-law of the President Kennedy.

EVERY time that I see Eunice Kennedy and R. Sargent Shriver on a Republican podium in California, no less, I want to vomit. When the people of KAL EE FOUR NeeyA re-elect this man , I want to vomit. After all these years in the United States, the man – an actor – cannot affect or have adopted an American accent? Yeah, right.

If California had marriage equality or same-sex marriage, and the Connecticut Canard would have been refused for full MA-style marriage, the dominos would fall more quickly.

Check out the Let California Ring campaign. They’re tipping the scales in California by reaching out to folks who are undecided.

http://www.LetCaliforniaRing.org

He spoke of the philosopher Blondel in expounding his contextual view of sexual theology. He said that there was a difference between activity and condition. Activity in this sense is sexuality devoid of anything but libidinous eroticism. He spoke of condition as the ability to feel what is defined theologically as conjugal love one for the other.

This is why when I have spoken openly on this subject, I have always used the term “psychosexual orientation” – hoping to include the fact that gay and lesbian love is conjugal and therefore more than erotic love which includes it.

Marriage Equality is a good title. It is, as I understand it, the name of several LBGT organisations in the States. It does insinuate positively that same and opposite sex marriage is equal definitionally.

Oh, the old “gender” versus “sex” controversy. My grammarian friends insist that the word sex is appropriate in this regard. I agree, however, that gender is more acceptable in a nation with many phobias, especially the erotic variety.

The Canadian journalistic term is now same sex marriage. Oh yes, this does exclude papers in Hell-berta and in fundy rags. I understand, of course, that the United States of America is not Canada, and that your struggle for complete equality under law will take many more years, many more strategies, and fighting the Orwellian forces of language for many more definitions.

Until we are even half as good as the Repugs at mastering the power of carefully chosen words we will continue advancing at a snail’s pace, slowed or stopped by having to constantly cut through thickets of rhetorical thorns planted and repeatedly fertilized by our enemies.

Their professional researchers taught them to say “climate change” rather than “global warming” and “right to life” over “anti-abortion,” and came up with buzzwords like “the homosexual agenda,” “family values,” and “activist judges.” Like magic incantations they have mesmerized the electorate, including many of our own loved ones, into forgetting that gays come from and create families and were it not for activist judges on the Supreme Court [after Nader Nuts and Repug operatives through the election into a standoff] George Bush fils would not be in the White House.

While “gay marriage,” unlike “queer marriage” can serve purposes of clarity on rare occasion, we should all form a pact to primarily, religiously use the term “marriage equality.” It has the “double” power that the brilliant if dishonest and demagogic “right to life” does. That message subtly equates being pro abortion rights with being “pro death.”

In a more positive way, we would be equating being anti “marriage equality” for LGBTs with being anti-equality period, thereby putting the burden of proof on our opponents who like to wrap themselves in red, white, and blue flags of “liberty and justice for ALL.”

“Gay marriage” at once suggests, however erroneously, that gay love and relationships are somehow intrinsically different in value than straight love and relationships, and, at the same time, sets off the false alarm they’ve already been successfully programmed to freak out over—that gays want “special rights” nongays don’t have.

I don’t know whether it was a friend or enemy who first started using the term “sexual preference,” but I do know it had permeated thought processes by the time we realized that it gave misleading credence to the belief that being gay is a choice. That is, gay men COULD have sex/relationships with women but they PREFER other men. In addition, too often the colloquial “sex” is used [“sexual orientation,” “same-sex marriage/relationship/household”] when “gender” is more semantically accurate and less counterproductive in a society that is both homophobic AND erotiphobic. And I am repeatedly shocked when I hear anyone gay still use the term “lifestyle.”

yes if social policy was decided by popular vote
the only people with any rights in our democracy would be white heterosexual men.

all this polling is just a cover for politicians to do nothing.

It is no laughing matter when marriage is narrowly defined as a theocratic exercise when religious ceremonies without a licenced minister is not valid in the eyes of the state. You go to the city hall to obtain a marriage licence. The minister must register with city hall or county or provincial government in order to officiate legally.

The Connecticut Canard is being seen for the Plessy and Jim Crow law that it is….a chance for the neocons to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat like they did in VT and CT and NH as well as NJ as opposed to real marriage in MA.

The poll-driven centrists have actually convinced the sheeple that justice is given when the polls say so. If that were the case, then heterosexual interracial marriage would still be illegal even after 1967.