Christians for Civil Unions

I went along to St Andrews on the Terrace today to check out the Christians For Civil Unions evening. Although I enjoyed myself,and caught up with lots of people I hadn`t seen for a while, I have become aware that both sides of this debate appear to fuse the two bills, and don’t understand what each bill contains - and it’s a bit hard to do so until Monday when the bills surface. I understand the bills thus:

The Civil Union bill is not about legal equality, for example, the ability to visit your partner in hospital as next of kin, the bill is all about social recognition. It's just that supporters of the CUB are still emphasising the legal equality aspect by wrongly saying that the Civil Union Bill provides that legal equality and avoids legal discrimination. Opponents concentrate on the nature of the sexual relationship, and conclude that as gay sex doesn't produce children, therefore gay sex - and by default, gay relationships - are not in the public good, and such relatinships do not deserve legal equality or social recognition.

If you just had the Omnibus bill then we are saying that all unmarried couples should have the same legal rights and responsibilities. Some see this as a matter of justice, not just equality.

However for defacto couples who don’t want to get married, they have the legal equality through Omnibus and get the social recognition through marriage. If they don’t want the social recognition and don’t want to get married, some think they don’t deserve that social recognition any other way. Gay couples, on the other hand, will have the legal equality but don’t have the choice of social recognition by the state, as they can't marry.

So Civil Unions are set up purely for social recognition of same sex couples. That’s not equality, its just politically achievable. And it extends to defacto couples purely because our laws say we cannot discriminate unlawfully on the basis of sexual orientation.

Jordon Carter, in reply to a comment I wrote on his blog, says "

If you want to say that the state should not be conferring status on gay couples through Civil Unions, then you need a damn good reason why that argument doesn't also apply to traditional heterosexual marriages"

Well Jordan, when your flatmate e-mails me the bills, I may have that damn good reason. Like a civil union is not a marriage, for a start. Conferring status on gay couples through civil unions can only be compared to conferring status on heterosexual couples who are not married - but have Civil Unions. You are not comparing apples with apples - well, maybe comparing granny smiths with NZ Roses ( which is another brand of apple FYI)

However, if you say that the state should be conferring status on gay couples through Civil Unions, and equate that to marriage status - and you think that is equality - you need a damn good reason as to why that status should not be same sex marriage - and so does the Government. Don’t forget married people have international recognition of their status, partners in a civil union don't - they are still classed as unmarried.

Oh, and for anyone interested, I was told that the terms "husband" and "wife" are to remain in the legislation. We`ll see on Monday.