To be honest, I was being a bit contrarion, but, my main point is if the state started to recognize gay marriage, it wouldn't really qualify as a revolution. The LGBT community was helped by the civil rights movements, since discrimination on a large amount of criteria effectively became illegal, and those who practiced it could be sent to court for it. It's no longer where you can't walk on the same side of the street as the other people, it's just to where something fairly arbitrary isn't recognized. What is marriage, exactly, and what does it do? Technically, the government isn't supposed to be involved, as they don't get into such affairs of the people, so all they're really supposed to do is record marriages, not determine them, although it's often seen that way. While I support gay marriage, and don't want to trivialize it as an issue, I just mean to express the magnitude of the other pressing issues which had far more profound effects (like being able ot vote, not be property, have your votes matter etc.), and what gay marriage is, which is largely symbolic. Saying that you can have what he has, even if it's largely unimportant, to show equality and non-preferential treatment.
Marriage, recognized by the state, was never intended to be a right, since the government does not, or is supposed to not, grant you the right of marriage (separation of church and state and all that). In fact, it's poorly defined all together; it's why many liberal leaning countries, like Australia, still don't have gay marriage, it's mostly due to logistics. It's important to also note that you can't legalize gay marriage, since it technically isn't illegal. We don't normal expect titles to be given to people in modern society, like Knight, or Bishop, but much like Doctor, that's all it really is, so it becomes weird to mess with. Today, the only possible purpose of it, legally, is via the tax implications, which more or less count you as a single person. It helps to explain how a stay at home spouse suddenly got 40,000 dollars to spend, and how it wasn't from a robbery or anything, they got it from their partner. Marriage is already so illy defined, by the state, that, changing the marriage to reflect something new begs the question, what is it really here for? The only obvious legal ramifications of it are more or less for tax purposes. In fact, that's all it's for. The government never intended to recognize all marriage, as with people marrying their golf clubs or baseball gloves, or like with polygamy. We could recognize polygamy, but what that means is now that ultrarich people could spread out their money over potentially millions in religious cults where everyone is married, and get out of paying taxes as if they were in a higher income bracket, after it washes out over everyone (marriage, right now, is as such taht if you make say, 100,000 a year, and your wife stays at home, you only get taxed if you were making 50,000 a year, or half that money; so, with 1 million people, each making an average of 50,000 a year, or say half at 20,000 and half at 80,000, they'd be taxed as if they made 50,000 a year, or were in a middle class income tax bracket). You also have to remember that corporations legally count as people, too. Saying a man and a woman differentiates the idea of people, who legally count as a whole lot of things, from trusts to corporations, and thus also have lots of money which can be spread out. For tax benefits, now corporations could go out and get married in the thousands. The ideas of what can happen next are pretty startling. So, what then, we ban polygamy for the rich?
The only fair thing to do, at this point, is to define two forms of marriages, one for tax purposes, and one for symbolic names, since people are only looking for legitimacy by the government in their marriages anyways, since a person determines if they are married or not, not the government. Legally, love doesn't even need to be a part of marriage. Domestic partnerships between roomates could be platonic, as well.
It's a far more complex issue when we consider that marriage by the state's only real purpose is for tax issues. And changing it would be like taking 1 step forward and 3 steps back, since it's really not supposed to exist in the first place. It was never intended to recognize all marriages or unions between people, just make it easier on the government and the people who were in typical relationships. On and on, it becomes a tad crazy to deal with.
Anyways, despite all this, my main point is, civil rights did help the LGBT communiy, with the only thing being left the matter of marriage which both sides support about equally (with the liberal side leaning more towards it), that isn't resolved yet primarily due to logistical issues. The civil rights acts may have technically been ratified in 1964, but it took much longer for the effects to actually take place, and people would only stop being discriminatory if the cases were brought to court. Today, even if we had some minor change in regards to civil rights, it wouldn't really qualify as some new upheaval of an old system, just some minor changes, so it wouldn't really be a revolution. Let alone directed at the rich, as Jorost suggests.
As for the whole conservative thing, I challenge you to actually name a single piece of racist legislation proposed by the Republicans, in the last 40 years. Or ever.
Edited by Manoka, 18 February 2015 - 10:32 PM.
