Civil Unions for Same Sex Siblings!

So, I was just thinking that if "civil unions" are actually what the religious right are trying to spin them as, then the religious right is promoting something that runs counter to "family values."

Bear with me for a minute here, since I'm still trying to work this out.

See, it's like this. "Marriage" is the thing that, it seems to me, some people (man, I wish I could use the term "The Moral Majority" because that's exactly what I want to use) equate with white weddings in a cathedral between a fresh-faced girl and boy who intend to live with each other "til death do us part" even if it kills them. So here's this term "civil union," which is being used by these same people (as well as, oddly enough, proponents of same-sex marriage) to mean something that the law allows but the cathedral isn't really very fond of. I'm not sure who coined the term, but I think it's become a word that is often used to differentiate between what good, god-fearing heterosexuals have and what those Other People get when they go pick up a license and the law lets them do their sinning sinning sinner worst.

I think that's a terrible differentiation, but I'm seeing it happening, so let's go with it for a minute. Let's say that a "marriage" is what you get when you are joined before God by your [insert religious figure of choice here]. A "civil union" is just something that you get so that you and your partner of choice are bound before the law and can therefore participate in the legal benefits of marriage even if your local [insert place of worship here] urges its members to make the sign of the cross whenever they pass by your front lawn.

Bearing that in mind: The other day, one of my research scientists came into my office and we were chatting. He's decided to go freelance, so he was turning in his letter of resignation and giving me the research materials he's been working with so that I could put them back into the system and file them away for the next guy.

Totally out of the blue he said, "You know, I got married yesterday."

Turns out, he and his long-time girlfriend decided that, since he was going freelance, they'd finally get married. Their relationship is pretty stable (they've been together for 20 years), and they honestly hadn't really been thinking about ever getting married, but the truth of the matter was that if he wanted to go freelance it just made sense. She could put him on her health insurance, and after all, they are getting older, so if anything happened (heaven forbid), etc., etc. So what he really did was get Civil Unionized.

Now, I read romance novels, and I watch movies. I also live in the real world (on good days), so I know there have been books and movies about straight people pretending to be gay for benefits (I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry recently--so silly, and harmful to the cause on a lot of levels), and also books and movies about "convenient" marriages (Green Card being one of my favorites). But that's just because...well...it's perfectly possible to form a legal, contractual relationship for reasons other than love.

The entire premise of these movies circulated around the idea that these people were getting into this "marriage"--actually a civil union, obviously--for shady reasons, and the authorities were onto them, darn it! But in point of fact, it's not that hard to pull the wool over the authorities' eyes. Frankly, the authorities really don't have the time or resources to care that much. Well, there's the immigration thing, about which they're pretty serious (yes, I had a husband from Pakistan). But otherwise, seriously--it's not like you can prove that a marriage is valid by putting a camera in the bedroom and making sure the couple is having conjugal relations x times every month. Talk about your tax dollars at work? Sheesh.

In fact, if you look at history, it seems that getting married for Love is nice and all, but it's better to get married because you are two people who will function better together as a team than as individuals, and if you have a healthy appreciation and respect for each other then that's a whole lot more useful than if you have the hots for each other 100% of the time. In a perfect world, you'd have both, obviously. But if you had to choose...well. Go practical. Would that be a "Civil Union" and not a marriage?

Pretty sure it wouldn't be, but if it were...here's my point about families.

Let's say that my bestest friend in the world and I were roomies. And let's also say that, for some reason or other, she decided that she wanted to work on becoming a writer full-time. Now, I love and respect her, and if she decided that she wanted to clean my house, walk my dog, make my food, do the shopping--you know, all that stuff--instead of paying rent, then I might just go for that. But let's also say that she needed health insurance.

Okay, we hop up to Connecticut, get ourselves a civil union, and live happily ever after...for a year or two. She gets settled, finds herself a good union-provided plan, and we can split up. It was as successful as a lot of marriages in that it lasted as long as a lot of them, and we didn't even argue about who gets the CD collection.

I could do that with a male partner, as well. Not that I'm saying this is my goal for the next few years, but it would be possible.

However, let's say that my BFF is my sister. Which is probably about the truth.

My sister would like to become a working musician, but right now she's got a full-time job as a professor of music at a private university. She makes good money, has great benefits, and her pension plan is growing. But let's say she wanted to move back to the NYC area, and I offered to help her out by forming a civil union with her and letting her use my health insurance for a while. Let's also comment, here, about the fact that my sister hasn't ever married, and she would really rather like to adopt a child--a civil union with me could help her there, too! My child is an honor student! I'm a great mommy!

Yeah...you see where I'm going with that. The same would go for my daughter when she's over 25 and struggling through law school, or say my mother if (heaven forbid) she were alone and her health insurance couldn't cover something that went wrong.

I can't see any reason why such a civil union shouldn't be perfectly legal. Obviously you could still only have one per person at any time, so it's not like I'd be trying to get away with supporting everybody, or anything. And I suppose that if civil unions really are just about extending the legal rights of marriage into relationships that aren't between one man/one woman, then there's really only one argument against it.

Because, obviously, I'm not having sex with my family members, so it's not a real partnership.

Okay, I don't believe it's that simple. It's just that that's the bottom line for people who talk about "civil unions" between same sex couples as though they're somehow different from marriages. As though a "marriage" is a higher thing because it's sealed by God, while a "civil union" is just legally approved sex. It's therefore inferior to marriage, and not only because it's the law justifying sin, but because it's approved or disapproved by the rampant mass of idiots in any old democracy rather than [insert divinity of choice].

Okay, so "marriage" is a specific type of partnership, between two specific people. It's not purely a legal agreement between a man and a woman that she will bear his children and he will support them, but it is a legally binding agreement and therefore a legally determined right. Individual rights as determined by law are not to be dictated over the pulpit. The things your [insert religious figure of choice] tells you should, in theory, be limited to instruction on how to make the world a better place and yourself a better person. These things should have nothing to do with how you impose yourself upon the rights of others. Your religion is a subjective choice, not objective law, which is why we (theoretically) have separation of [insert expletive of choice] church and state.

So, yes, the "Civil Union" portions of the marriage equation are an issue of law, and they do represent the part of marriage that is legally binding. But in the end you have to talk about marriage as a whole and not wishy washy it into something that sounds like it belongs to the churches while the unwashed masses can decide lesser things like whether the sinners of the world have the legal right to provide health insurance for each other. It's not about that. It's about saying that all people should have equal rights--not just under the law, but as human beings. The part of marriage for which there is no real other name--though we try to define it as love, partnership, commitment, and so forth--is also a right, and not just a religious ceremony. The thing is, though, that since it's not just a legal right, it's a human right, some people start to get confused about where moralizing ends and being ethical begins. We as a country like to pat ourselves on the back for the way we try to be fair about legal rights (well, in the past half century at least), but clearly we're still working on human rights--especially those of us who seem to believe that we, and not God, have the obligation to define which of us, exactly, are "created equal."

So, forgive my modest proposal, if you will. I submit that there are people who want to retain "marriage" as a church-related concept so that they can vote against giving it to a certain segment of the population. For this reason, they use the term "civil union," to relate a concept that is just a legal frame for something that isn't fully marriage, but is merely a legal tie. This allows them to believe that a "civil union" isn't a human right, it's just a matter of health insurance, and therefore they can choose to deny it to people in the same way they could choose to vote for or against a budget proposition.

Most people go into a marriage for love, not because there are legal advantages to it (and actually in a lot of cases it actually isn't a particularly sound financial proposition). I'm honestly tired of listening to people debate the issue as though it's all about being able to visit someone in the hospital. Cut the crap about civil unions and the law. Let's just let it all be about the true partnership that the word "marriage" represents. That partnership can't be expressed by any alternate word because it's both incredibly complex and incredibly basic. So basic, many people can't imagine living without having it as not just an opportunity, but a milestone to which their lives will undoubtedly lead them. That basic, human (not the legal) right is what is being denied to individuals by people who take their "morals" into the voting booth with them but leave their ethics behind.

If I had any power in this world, I would exhort religious leaders to encourage their flocks to love one another. Certainly there will always be groups that believe that on some objective level there is "sin" in certain types of sexuality, but since the majority of these religions also preach love and tolerance, there should never be a majority of voters who believe that it is not only their right, but their obligation to deny people the opportunity to commit themselves in love to their chosen mate. This should especially be true if people don't use terminology that encourages them to believe that what they're denying has less value than a "true" marriage.

And if they can't work that out in their heads, then they should bloody well let me have a civil union with my sister, dammit!