Reply #12: Retire the term "Civil Unions" completely

[Tom Rinaldo]

Replace it with "Legally Wed". I acknowledge that I am side stepping the question you pose but one of the problems with "civil unions" and "domestic partnerships" is that the terms themselves are devoid of emotion and any historic resonance. They culturally do not capture the deep and often sacred meening that "marriage" conveys, instead they communicate a second class relationship, less profound than marriage.

I think the day will come within a generation when the vast majority of Americans won't blink an eye lid at gay marriages, but right now the cultural and political Right have dug in their heels fighting to define "marriage" as the union of a man and woman - citing both religion and tradition to uphold that definition. I think a lot of that political battle can be outflanked by immediately embracing the term "to wed" in our civil statutes. Weddings have profound traditional cultural significance, unlike, say, domestic partnership ceromonies. Once the term "legally wed" is widely established in civil law, the semantic barrier between gays and lesbians wedding each other and marrying each other will quickly erode, and people will soon wonder what all the fuss was about in the first place.