Posted by
TheChair on Thursday, August 28, 2008 3:33:55 AM
Same-sex marriage advocates frequently argue that opponents to it are homophobes. Pro-traditional marriage people aren't
for marriage, they say, so much as they are "against gays." We who would preserve traditional marriage counter by insisting we are not against gays, but are merely trying to preserve marriage. This may sound like semantics, but careful thought shows it is not. The existence and expansion of California's Domestic Partnership law proves that traditional marriage people are right.
Family Code section 297.5 starts off:
(a) Registered domestic partners shall have the same rights, protections, and benefits, and shall be subject to the same responsibilities, obligations, and duties under law, whether they derive from statutes, administrative regulations, court rules, government policies, common law, or any other provisions or sources of law, as are granted to and imposed upon spouses.
It goes on from there. Former governor Gray Davis signed the Domestic Partnership Act into law. Since then, the rights of domestic partners have expanded to the comprehensive stature you see, above. This generous law was what the California Supreme Court held wasn't good enough for same-sex couples under the state equal protection clause. Only full-blown marriage would do, according to the Court. But only in Wonderland are "the same rights" not equal to their point of reference. There wasn't any benefit of marriage that California had withheld from registered domestic partners, other than the title, "spouse." The present assault on marriage, therefore, is plainly that, an assault on marriage. Nothing more.
If Californians were against gays, they would not have passed the domestic partnership act. They would not have amended it and expanded it and made it the same as marriage for those involved. Proposition 8 is about the preservation of marriage and the benefits that brings. Nothing more.