Foxy:

“Same-sex couples (also most people who want to get married)
want to have their marriage recognised legally.”

You can have legal relationships without being married and you can have marriages that are not recognised legally as Yuyutsu says.

If marriage is about love then why does the marriage have to be legal?

“I personally wanted my marriage to be legal.
That was my choice. We all have choices in
life”

Why did you want your marriage to be legal?

Isn’t legal marriage an abuse of both marriage and the law? Marriage is a relationship based on love which you can never control by law and law is about rights that should not be dependent on being married.

Dear Phanto,

Same sex couples cannot have a marriage that is
legal in this country. They want to have that
choice. They do not want the government to tell
them that their marriage will be illegal.

You may think that illegality is unimportant. But
that is irrelevant. Same sex couples
want to have the same rights as heterosexual couples
regarding marriage. It's as simple as that.

Why did I want my marriage to be legal?

Because I was in love and I wanted to publicly celebrate
our commitment.

I wanted society to recognise our union.

phanto,

I see we’ve switched back to the marriage-shouldn’t-exist-in-the-first-place angle. And this, after just recently expressing concern for the institute of marriage, as though it needed protecting.

<<You can have legal relationships without being married …>>

Yes, you can, but marriage offers simplicity in its standardisation. We went though this in our last discussion:

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=19002#338753

<<… and you can have marriages that are not recognised legally as Yuyutsu says.>>

And what use would they be to those who are not religious?

<<If marriage is about love then why does the marriage have to be legal?>>

Because the benefits of marriage require it to be a legal arrangement. We addressed the reasons for this in our last discussion (see the link above).

<<Isn’t legal marriage an abuse of both marriage and the law?>>

No, it’s not.

<<Marriage is a relationship based on love …>>

Oh? It was only a few days ago that you had no idea what the connection between love and marriage was. You even accused me of not being able to draw a connection between the two because I addressed your obtuse question with a line from a Frank Sinatra song, suggesting that I was scraping the bottom of a barrel. Now suddenly we understand the connection?

<<… which you can never control by law …>>

Actually, it can be. But that’s not what legal marriage is about. This is red herring.

<<… law is about rights that should not be dependent on being married.>>

The law is about a lot of things. And, yes, some of those rights should be dependent on being married. We’ve discussed this before, too (see the link above).

Foxy:

“Same sex couples cannot have a marriage that is
legal in this country. They want to have that
choice.”

I know that but why would they want to take advantage of legal marriage?

“Same sex couples
want to have the same rights as heterosexual couples
regarding marriage. It's as simple as that.”

What rights are these and why can they only be attained by marriage?

“Because I was in love and I wanted to publicly celebrate
our commitment.”

You can do all that without legal marriage. Are couples who live together without legal marriage not in love? Can’t you have public celebration of your commitment without having legal marriage? How does the legality of it make it any more public? The ‘publicness’ depends on how many people know you are married and not on how many know you are legally married.

“I wanted society to recognise our union.”

Society recognises many types of union between people and refuses to accept others. SSM does not guarantee that society recognises their union. You cannot force society to recognise what it does not want to recognise. A majority of people may vote for it but that doesn’t mean that they agree with it. People do not always vote based on reason and logic. Sometimes they are manipulated or bullied into voting for something.

Dearest Foxy,

There is no law stopping two men or two women from living together. If they want to for some reason 'formalise' such a deep love and friendship, they can always choose another word :) This side-track that they are otherwise living illegally, is really just are herring.

And you may be - unintentionally of course - mixing 'illegality' with illegitimacy'. I have enough ancestors in my family to be all too familiar with illegitimacy, and the extreme fragility of man-woman bonds that aren't sanctioned - protected - by the law as a 'marriage', often more honoured in the breach.

No such fragility affects same-sex couples, by definition. So they do not meet an essential criterion of the need to get married. Neither one in such a relationship can get the other pregnant, and then piss off. After all, it's one of the attractions of homosexual relationships that the partners are forever free of that worry.

I'm suggesting that marriage, the possibility of pregnancy and inhibiting the rapid departure of the 'father', and the burden on the State (or in early days, the parish, and workhouse) are a package, which is not relevant to homosexual relationship. Marriage, in other words, gives women some (perhaps false)sense of security.

Nor, of course, is marriage quite so relevant in relationships involving post-menopausal women: I wonder what the rate of de facto relationships amongst such couples is. But it would still give them security in the unequal power balance almost inherent in gender relations, that feminists have so easily forgotten.

Love always,

Joe

Foxy, " I want society to recognise our union".

Firstly, society already recognises unions, regardless of their official status. You would be surprised at how many couples that you believe to be married are actually de facto. I know lesbian couples that have been recognised by the local community as having a relationship, and no, they don't feel the need for " marriage".

Secondly, a civil contract would be official recognition, by both government and society. Unfortunately the gay lobby has rejected the offer of civil contracts, they are holding out for the word marriage, as if somehow that will magically transform their union into the same type of relationship as heterosexual marriage.

I fully understand that some gay couples wish to have the same type of legal recognition heterosexual couples can choose to have, however I don't accept that it has to be called marriage. Marriage has always meant a heterosexual relationship, even with polygamy. A same sex relationship, being different, should have its own name to recognise that difference.

This has never been about " marriage equality", because if so, supporters of SSM wouldn't be so horrified by the thought of equality for polygamy, group marriage and adult incest couples. This has always been about trying to prove that heterosexual and homosexual relationships are the same