[Soon]

Originally Posted by Jess

Guess we'll have to agree to disagree because as I see it ( and as law will reflect), unless it is marriage, it will NOT be equal. It will always be some sort of "lesser than" law and will never cover the over 1000 rights we are denied because we can't get married.

It seems Obama tends to do a hella lot of backtracking and performing of half measures when it comes to the basic human rights that he was so very much in support of while campaigning. It's unfortunate that campaigns become more important than doing the right thing and taking care of business. Read : immigration reform which he promised to address within his first 90 days in office and now says basically he won't touch til after midterms. I don't single him out, as all politicians do this. They are merely mouthpieces for their party.

I just want ONE reporter to ask President Obama what made him change his 1996 pubic opinion of being an "unequivocal" supporter of marriage equality to only being a supporter of civil unions. Usually one's position on this matter evolves from civil unions to marriage as opposed to the other way around.

President-elect Obama's answer to a 1996 Outlines newspaper question on marriage was: "I favor legalizing same-sex marriages, and would fight efforts to prohibit such marriages." There was no use of the phrase "civil unions".

I also think by framing the argument as same sex (or gay) marriage makes it look like we are fighting for a separate or different (read: lesser than) kind of marriage than *straight* marriage (which no one uses/marriage is the default term for marriages involving heterosexuals). Lately, all the anti-marriage equality spokespeople have used the phrase *traditional marriage* implying that any other marriage is some kind of different version of marriage or freak knock off of *real* marriage.

Equal marriage rights or marriage equality is the phrase (imo) our side should be using when discussing the matter. Putting *gay* or *same sex* in front of it really makes it look like we are asking for a different kind of marriage as opposed to having access to marriage rights that already exist and whom all should have access.