The rights and the label are inseparable.
Unless you're saying that being able to use the
term "married" is a right
Yes, getting married is a right.
no, they aren't; there's absolutely no reason that all the legal rights attached to a marriage currently couldn't - shouldn't - be attached to a non-religious civil union instead.
How many goddamn articles do I have to link to enumerating reasons civil unions and civil marriages are not and will never be equal to one-another before someone reads them?
And if you are saying that, I'd love to see a rational defense of it (and no, "I want to be married" isn't rational).
Loving v. Virginia, which I have repeated a thousand times.
You can't rationally claim that segregated fountains are okay if the ones for black people give out some of the same water. And you cannot rationally claim that segregated marital schemes are okay just because civil unions give out some of the same rights.
The rights and the label are inseparable.
This seems to be where you keep mistaking my point. I'm not saying marriage for some and not for others. I'm saying civil unions for all.
Yes, and then when you try traveling overseas and you'll quickly discover that civil unions will be ignored by foreign jurisdictions and no one will be regarded as married, and they'll get promptly screwed over if, for instance, someone gets hurt and a spouse needs to make medical decisions -- only there ARE no spouses, because no one's really married.
You are honestly asking what the difference is between incest and homosexuality?
Seriously?
Okay, to start with, homosexuality is not in any way harmful or bad for you,
STDs, for one.
STDs aren't caused by homosexuality, they're caused by not taking common-sense safety precautions such as the use of condoms and/or by sexual promiscuity. There are plenty of sexually responsible LGBT Americans who are not promiscuous, and there are plenty of straights who are sexually irresponsible and promiscuous.
nor does it indicate any sort of mental illness or past trauma. Whereas there are long-observed psychological mechanisms in place in mentally healthy people to prevent incest, and incest is usually seen in examples of non-consensual physical and/or emotional abuse.
"Usually seen"? Not "always" or "invariably" seen?
I don't think you can reasonably make absolute statements about human psychology the way you seem to want to.
Again--what of scenarios involving consent?
My attitude would be that if it can be shown that the parties involved are not psychologically dysfunctional in some way -- are not the victims of trauma or abuse -- and that thus they have the capacity to consent, then it should be legal. However, since incest is so widely linked to abuse and an inability to consent, I think that the burden of proof that there hasn't been abuse and both parties are capable of consent should fall on the parties petitioning to marry. This is the only instance in which I think such a burden should fall on the parties.
Why would the legal age of adulthood be later than the age of consent?
Mostly because I don't question the ability of the vast majority of teenagers to engage in sexual activities without significant psychological trauma--
1) Unplanned pregnancies.
2) Afformentioned STDs.
Both are
significantly decreased if teenagers are given access to comprehensive sexual education and to contraception. Mind you, the rates of sexual activity remain unchanged either way; no matter what you do, a majority of teenagers will
always engage in sexual activity and this cannot be controlled or changed. This is why I don't question the ability of most teenagers to have sex without significant psychological trauma (provided, again, they receive comprehensive sex ed and access to contraception) and therefore don't object to the age of consent being lower than the age of majority.
Having said
that, I'd prefer there to be some way for the ages of consent and majority to coincide, but I doubt that a large enough percentage of teenagers are psychologically mature enough at the most common age of consent (16) for that to be feasible.
