Prop 8 to pass?

[Rhyfelwyr]

I am not sure if there was this reservation in what you said or not, but the only change I would make is that all current marriage rights must be present, for ALL of those couples. Even if we are changing the title to a civil contract and getting rid of marriage, or whatever. Failing that whatever benefits are in the civil contract must be precisely the same for everyone. The idea of keeping legal marriage, and creating a separate civil contract... .I realize you aren't an American, Rhyfe, but we have a saying here about our legal history: separate but equal is never equal. Segregated schools were supposed to be separate but equal, segregated services were supposed to be separate but equal, segregated communities were supposed to be separate but equal.

Leaving marriage as-is, and creating a separate civil contract to exist simultaneously, is just BEGGING for an employee of an insurance company, or an employee in social security, or an employee in hospital administration, to refuse service/access to a same-sex spouse with a civil contract "on moral grounds." Or for whole industries or services to refuse to recognize it, or for individual states to slip in benefits to state marriage benefits which do not exist in the Federal civil contract, etc.

Well here we have seperate Catholic/Non-denominational schools and its not the worst thing in the world.

The state should be able to make people recognise each others rights, but it should never demand that people find anything moral. God knows what the founding fathers would have made of same-sex marriages.

[Koga No Goshi]

Well here we have seperate Catholic/Non-denominational schools and its not the worst thing in the world.

As I stated you do not have the same history of segregated legal rights in the UK as here, with the accompanying repeated findings that they don't work here. Are separate LEGAL rights accorded to Catholic vs. non-denominational weddings in the UK? Somehow I doubt that is the case.

The state should be able to make people recognise each others rights, but it should never demand that people find anything moral. God knows what the founding fathers would have made of same-sex marriages.

The founding fathers were not the fundamentalist christians you seem to believe they were. Most of them were deists. And.... equal legal rights is "forcing anyone to find something moral"... how, exactly? You can go cheat on your wife with 18 different women, and that's legal. But I don't believe it's moral.