Posted: Apr 09, 2012 8:56 pm
purplerat wrote:UndercoverElephant wrote:We already have civil partnerships, so this is not about "discrimination" in any material sense.
It is most definitely gender discrimination. Only allowing men to marry women discriminates against women and only allowing women to marry men discriminates against men.
Please define "discriminate."
In it's non-political usage, that word just means "to differentiate according to type", so a "discriminator" on a metal detector can identify different sorts of metal. In its political usage, it means "treating people unfairly based on some arbitrary distinguishing feature like race or sex."
If I'm "discriminating", it is in the non-political sense, because there is no unfair treatment of gays in civil partnerships. This isn't about "fairness." It's about the cultural recognition that there is no important difference between gay and heterosexual marriages. I believe that is not possible, and not right, because there are important differences.