Acceptance of Same-sex Marriage or Civil Unions; Fighting Yesterday's War

In a previous post, I suggested that sincere devout people, conservative Christians for the most part and predominately supporters of Republican candidates, have been and are being cynically used for partisan purposes. An example of this manipulation could be found in the alleged "War on Christmas" discovered and promoted by commentators on Fox News.

Another area surrounds the idea of marriage between individuals of the same sex.

Public opinion in large measure depends on what the relationship is called. A poll conducted by the Pew Institute last year indicated, a clear majority (56%) continues to oppose allowing gays and lesbians to marry while 35% express support. But nearly as large a majority (54%) supports allowing homosexual couples to enter into legal agreements that would give them many of the same rights as married couples.

In all cases, there are two aspects of "illegal marriages" in the United States. First, is the marriage/union legal where celebrated? Second, will the marriage/union, valid where celebrated, have the parties' status recognized in another jurisdiction?

The term "marriage" is a charged one. What I refer to are formal, legally recognized, unions between individuals of the same sex. From these unions flow legal rights, including the right of intestate inheritance, the right to participate in advance care and medical decisions - in short two people living as a family. (Of course, one of the consequences is the right to dissolution of the relationship in a procedure akin to Divorce.) Regardless of the attempts in some jurisdictions to forbid such unions, the issue has been joined and there will come a time when same-sex couples will be able to enter into marriage or quasi-marital relationships; the idea of forbidding these will be as foreign as the once common laws preventing mixed race marriage. (For my present purposes, I will refer to these arrangements as "civil unions".)