From a classic Dilbert strip:
Pointy-haired boss addressing meeting: "We're poised for success -- we expect huge earnings and increased market share. Next on the agenda: There will be no raises because it will be a difficult year." (Awkward pause.) "Carol, I thought I told you to put the United Way update between those two agenda items."
Carol: "Oopsie."
Who says life never imitates art? Spanky then:
Gay Marriage and the end of marriage as we know it
The correlations are strong. Support for marriage is by far the weakest in countries with same-sex marriage. The countries with marriage-like civil unions show significantly more support for marriage. The two countries with only regional recognition of gay marriage (Australia and the United States) do better still on these support-for-marriage measurements, and those without either gay marriage or marriage-like civil unions do best of all.
Spanky now:
The Earth-Shattering Importance of Same-Sex Marriage
Or, spending years and years debating silly public policy issues that affect around 1% of the population:
“The number of same-sex couples surged 32.6% between 2001 and 2006…In 2006, same-sex couples represented 0.6% of all couples in Canada.”
I'm betting Spanky could have really used a United Way agenda item right about then.
7 comments:
Hi there!
Yes, I am one who is inclined to vote on Civil Unions, but still believe in the sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman.
The Union will satisfy all the legal issues that provide rights to spouses.
Thanks for your own thoughts.
Julian
www.ijulian.blogspot.com
Julian, is it the word "marriage" that you would rather keep separate from what we now call civil unions? If I, as a man, join a woman in civil ceremony (as I have), would you have an objection to the two of us calling our union a marriage (which of course we do)? We enjoy the tax advantages (though I haven't confirmed quantitatively that they're meaningful), but there was no religious figure involved. If it's the use of the word "marriage" that is at issue, who should be entitled to assign that name to a union?
What I am concerned about is will "marriage" mean that the little lady can't strap one on and ream me till the morning light?
Or would we lose any financial benefits?
Fellas, Julian's argument is really quite simple. Let me break it down for you.
- Words are sacred.
- Certain self-appointed people guard the sanctity of those words and determine what they mean for everyone else.
- Those people are the bigots.
Case closed!
Julian looks an awful lot like Lillian Hellman...
Julian, for gods' sake. TWO separate legal administrations of the virtually IDENTICAL type of legal relationship??
If it walks like a marriage, talks like a marriage, and quacks like a marriage -- it's a MARRIAGE.
But you want to keep them separate (and have all that extra bureaucracy and waste of the taxpayers' money, incidentally), all for the sake of preserving a WORD, rather than addressing the actual substance of the relationship itself??
And people say we're the superficial ones. Sheesh!
And since we're talking about the value of words over,you know, PEOPLE, and since Julian posted his blog, I'll link to an old blog post of my own, which demonstrates that when people say, "Fine, let them have civil unions but save the word 'marrige' for the rest of us," all they're really talking about is GENITALS:
Just use a different word
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