Civil Unions

Any rights which the government deigns to give to the citizens being governed by that government must be given to all citizens. There are at present hundreds of rights which exist for couples by way of the government and they must be universally applied for gay couples as well. If a couple wishes to enter a civil union it should not be for the government to say that you can't have rights because we don't allow those rights except for parties of opposite genders.

We can understand the arguments against marriage from the point of view of society. But, there's a significant issue when it comes to the rights given by the government to the citizens being governed. The fact that I could enter into a union with a woman and were I to die, all my affairs would be dealt with automatically. Children would switch custody, property would be transfered, decisions about my remains and care would be made.

There is no excuse for denying couples rights you give to other couples. It is injustice in its purest form. We aren't talking about approval, acceptance or endorsement rather we are talking about the basic rights of every individual. The requirement of government is to be fair in all regards. Without granting the same governmental rights as marriage to every couple that fairness is violated.

Civil unions are basic fairness.

Everybody has the same marriage rights.

A man can be married legally to a woman.

A woman can be married legally to a man.

A man can be married to a man without recognition from government.

A woman can be married to a woman without recognition from government.

Notice how homosexuals were not singled out. Heterosexuals and homosexuals have the same rights. It's just that homosexuals want the rights to be extended further, to where they want them, which doesn't necessarily need to be done.

"The requirement of government is to be fair in all regards."
The rights are the same for both parties. No party deserves special treatment.

From the Declaration of Independence (http://www.ushistory.org...)
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
Having a marriage acknowledged by government is neither Life nor Liberty nor the pursuit of Happiness.

Furthermore, if we start to allow homosexual marriage, we just moved the bar for what determines a marriage. You can't just expect a bar that you've pushed down a hill to stop where you want it. It's wisest to leave the bar where it is.

Let's say that you have a preacher who preaches his sermon at church every Sunday at 9:00 A.M. He does this for years and years. However, one day, a lazy man approaches the preacher and asks if the preacher could hold a Tuesday session for him and his buddies.
The preacher is reluctant, and says, "I'm sorry, but you should just come to Sunday sermons. You don't deserve special treatment, and besides, it is tradition to hold weekly church services only on Sundays."
But through pathos arguments, the lazy man convinced the preacher to hold Tuesday sermons. Word spread of this, and people started asking for Thursday sermons, and Wednesday sermons, and midnight sermons, and daily phone calls. The preacher ended up working longer and longer, becoming more and more frustrated with what he had started, until he finally yelled, "Enough!", and changed his sermons to Sunday only. Because people were so used to multiple sermons, they got mad, and murdered the preacher in the streets.

So, if we push the marriage bar down a little to include gay marriage, the bar won't stop there. It will keep rolling. People will start up polygamy again. Then people will start marrying animals. Then a lady will want to marry a rock. (http://www.popfi.com...) Then a man decides that he wants to marry the Sun. Eventually, we'll have the situation described by 1:00 of my YouTube video, and we'll have a marriage between four guys, three women, a dog, a cat, a frog, a quesadilla, five horses, two turtle doves, a colony of fire ants, the White House, the Great Barrier Reef, the Pythagorean Theorem, and Polaris.

That is why the bar must be set. It is already conveniently set at the traditional, natural, and successful standard of heterosexual marriage between humans only. Let's keep it that way. Vote CON.

Civil unions just give some people special treatment, and, if allowed, will end badly.