Of Course More People Know Marriage Than Civil Union

Among the bad arguments for neutering state marriage licensing I have heard, one of the strangest is this or some variation of this:

"Everybody knows what marriage is. Nobody knows what civil unions or domestic partnerships are."

You can see this played out in a Fox News clip that I found here, on TammyBruce.com. Tammy Bruce is openly lesbian, by the way, but she fights groupthink, champions the power of the individual, and is not on board with much of the "GLBTQQ" activist group agenda.

[The rest is below the fold if you care to read it.]

Assuming that this statement is true – so what? People know (or think they know) what a "corporation" is, which is another state designation describing a voluntary association. So does this mean that there is a problem with a "Limited Liability Partnership"? As I've written numerous times before, it is okay (and necessary) for a state to treat different kinds of voluntary associations differently.

Yes, everyone does know what marriage is, because all of us are here either because of a marriage or through a pairing that emulated marriage, even if for a moment. We know what marriage is because it existed before our nation, before our laws. The state did not invent marriage; it recognizes and licenses it. Domestic partnerships and civil unions are an invention of some modern states.

These days, who under the age of 70 doesn't know what a civil union is? And so what if they don't? Everyone knows what a high school diploma is. Some people aren’t as clear on what a GED means. Yet, we continue to issue both.

One of the reasons this argument is strange is that at the same time the person making it is counting on people to nod and say, "Yes... everyone knows what marriage is," most of the people understand that marriage unites the sexes by uniting a bride and a groom, and other pairings that try to look like marriage are a counterfeit, no matter how well-intentioned. So yes, "everyone" knows what marriage is – and we know what it isn't, too, but we're not supposed to think about that part when someone is making this argument.

This argument seems to be another variation of the "prestige" argument – that marriage is more appreciated in our culture than civil unions or domestic partnerships. But even so, where is it written that every personal relationship has to be treated the same by society and our laws? Friendship is one of the most important kinds of personal relationships there has ever been, but we don't issue state licenses for it. Friends may argue that their friendship should get the same state designation as marriage, but we are not obligated to comply.