Same-Sex Households
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
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Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Straight girl with a question about marriage...
I don't know if anyone is around...the boards are kind of dead right now. But I have a question. Some co-workers of mine were talking about their feelings on gay marriage and I was hoping for a little insight. I hate having these "debates" with people who are so misinformed, but if I'm going to be involved, I want to at least try to represent the opinions of the other side.
So all I want to know is; What is your (personal) main reason for wanting gay marriage to be legalized?
Re: Straight girl with a question about marriage...
Without marriage, we do not have the same rights and privileges that are available to striaght couples - these include inheritance rights, hospital visitation, the right to file taxes jointly, parental rights over our children and literally 1,000s of other legal rights.
While civil unions and domestic partnerships offer SOME of the rights that marriage does, they do NOT offer all. And even if new civil unions were created that had all the rights of marriage - I (and many agree with me) believe that separate is never equal.
It must be all of the rights, and it must be called the same thing, or it simply is not enough.
If my wife and I did not have the legal marriage that we are so glad to have here in MA, in the event that one of us died - our home/children could be taken away from the other. If one of us was unconscious in the hospital, the other could be barred from visiting due to not being "family." These are just a couple of examples.
I hope that's a good little overview to you. Again, this is just the tip of the iceberg.
On an even more personal level, "marriage" is a word that we all know and understand. When my wife and I were married and had a wedding and invited all of our family and friends, they understood our relationship more - they could see in no uncertain terms that we plan to spend our lives together and that this is a serious commitment. Anything less than "married" sounds like less.
It is also good to know that marriage, while it is an institution that goes back 1000s of years, has changed dramatically over time. In biblical times, polygamy was the standard, and most marriages were arranged, and for a loooong time after that, marriage was a property exchange where women were traded for money/land/livestock. So to say that "religious tradition" is a reason to oppose gay marriage is a load of bull.
HTH!
sahm ~ toddler breastfeeder ~ cloth diaperer ~ baby wearer
Ask yourself why you got married. I don't know you, but I can guess that you might have wanted to get married to:?
- Let your family, friends and the world know that you are 100% committed to your spouse
- Provide a stable family structure for your future children
- Celebrate your relationship
- Be recognized as a family for the purposes of insurance, inheritance, medical decisions, child custody, banking, taxes, and property ownership
Now ask yourself, if you had the option to form some other type of legal union that was not marriage, but still provided some rights, would you choose this second type of union, or would you still choose to get married? If you chose the second type of union, do you think that your family and friends and coworkers would react the same way? Do you think that it would be difficult to explain that no, you are not married, but you are "unioned" to every person who sees a form that you filled out, sees your ring and asks about it, meets your spouse??
I'm not trying to be flip at all. We want to get married for the same reasons you do. ?
Ditto - Mrs. F :-)
MrsF and leapgirl said it fabulously.
In "real" terms, I don't want to have to do our taxes 3 times to figure out who deducts the house/investments. I haven't changed my name yet, because my MA marriage license isn't "good" enough to do so in PA for a same-sex couple, and it would cost over $500 just in legal fees. I am trying to find a way to work adoption fees into our TTC budget, because unlike hetero married couples who use donor sperm or eggs due to infertility problems, we don't automatically have legal rights to our (sometimes legal) spouse's biological children birthed within our marriage. We're about to draw up wills, POA, etc basically in duplicate, since we can't go jointly on anything since we're not married in PA. I could go on...
Also....it is VERY demeaning to have to explain to insurance companies over and over again the "dependent" on your policy is not your child (who is one year older than you) but your "partner" (no one questions husband/spouse, but we're not legally married in PA due to the DOMA, so I have to use partner).