How do you mean. Are you talking about civil unions? Because they still don't confer the same benefits in most states or companies. To me, that's a clear cut civil rights issue.
Taking California as the example, the only civil rights gays have trouble accessing are either federal regulations
(something the state can not remedy but would not be an issue if Domestic Partnership were Federalized) such as immigration status for spouses, or are wrinkles currently being ironed out, such as non-compliant employers or policies which now need to be rewritten in part.
Now I'm lost. A childless hetero couple has tons of rights being denied a childless gay couple. What exactly do you propose to restore equality between the two situations?
Childless hetero couples were always seen as a benign exception to the rule, but childlessness was never
promoted.
The main gay-marriage arguments promote childlessness, something "marriage" per-se has never been about.
I propose allowing any, again, ANY child-rearing couple to marry, and banning any and all childless couples regardless of their composition. I would even support incest for this reason.
I didn't say that. I said you want to have legal heterosexual marriage because you're heterosexual. Same like gay people want to have legal homosexual marriage because they're homosexual. So, your argument that "the reason you support hetero marriage isn't equality" doesn't have bearing. You can support whatever kind of marriage you want, but you can't oppose somebody else's right to be married because that would violate the principal of equality.
You would do well to ask what my motivations are instead of assuming them and going from there. Your basic assumption is wrong and thus the argument you've based it on crumbles.
I wanted to make a family. As you can tell from my argument, I have no intention of stopping anyone else from making a family.
If gay-marriage is going to be about sweeping existing problems under the rug in the name of identity-politics and feel-good legislation, then I'll oppose legalizing gay-marriage even-though I would like to see child-rearing gays wed.
You shouldn't. You just shouldn't oppose it. If something causes suffering for another group, your only ethically legitimate positions are to favor ending the suffering because you magnanimously want to do something positive for another group, or to stay out of it because it doesn't involve you. To perpetuate suffering for another group when it doesn't effect you? That is not an ethically acceptable position.
Empathy for others would be an effect on me. If gay-marriage doesn't effect me, that inherently, automatically means I'm not epithetic to their plight.
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From my perspective, the current gay-marriage arguments and rationals harm me directly because they perpetuate if not exacerbate the divorce rate and related juvenile crime/abortion/teen-pregnancy rate, which in turn harm the economy.
