Isn't the argument against gay marriage basically appeal to tradition?
(I'll risk putting up a potentially unpopular opinion on the matter.)
Yes and no. Marriage is ultimately a religious institution and it's shitty that we integrated it with our legal system in the way that we did. If marriage held no legal import (beyond perhaps getting married automatically giving a couple some kind of SEPARATE legal status I'll call Coupled) then I myself'd probably say that the government can fuck right off with whether or not it gets to tell religious institutions who can qualify as holding a union specific to (a group of) religion(s).
Thing is that it doesn't work that way.
I'm not sure whether quibbling over the language is meaningful.
If the government gives one set of rights to married couples and then purports to give that same set of rights to long-term homosexual couples, but later decides to grant or remove some property from one or the other, the equality has been broken. I think the idea is that using the same terminology from both might protect homosexual couples from discrimination.
I also think that assumption might prove wrong. There may eventually be separate things written into law regarding "homosexual married couples" and "heterosexual married couples," at which point there's no point over bickering whether or not the term "marriage" is used, as the homosexual couple is again without equal rights to the heterosexual couple. I don't know about you, but I'd be hesitant to take anyone's word that there'll never be any legal language to differentiate between the two (or three) types of marriage that go through.
That said, I don't think we have enough information on the mental health of children who have been raised by one kind versus children who have been raised by the other kind to decide whether the heterosexual couples and homosexual couples should have equal rights in any and all matters.
(The hospital visitation rights are a fucking no-brainer; I'm not informed enough to comment on taxes or family matters.)
I'll still vote up gay rights as best possible, including supporting gay marriage, but that's me putting the gay couples ahead of religious institutions, which I'm generally happy to erode. If they want to change the language later, that's fine. (Homosexual union usurping the term "marriage" is the church/synagogue/etc.'s just desserts for getting in bed with the government.)
Major sidetrack. It's probably not an appeal to tradition so much as appeal to authority (God or will of the church) which is almost the same thing. However, trying to keep your terminology consistent isn't fallacious. If anything, they're being good kids and trying to avoid future equivocation (another fallacy) on the term "marriage."
(SRY WIL TRY 2 EDIT LATAR)
