"Jesus would rather kill, not marry, gay people" - Franklin Graham

[robvalue]

I'm trying to get my head around what these definionists are actually proposing. My nearest guess is that same sex couples are allowed all the same rights as married people, but it's not allowed to be called a marriage. It's labeled as a sub-par, not-real marriage (civil union or whatever) so that all the insecure people with "real marriages" don't feel threatened.

How absolutely pathetic. This is my most charitable interpretation as well.

I figured out what is also really going on, and it's obvious: the word "marriage" is considered sacred to some people. That's a religious position, since words are just words, and aren't magic. Religion doesn't get to own words, sorry.

But what we're talking about here is the legal definition. That's all that has changed. People are free to use whatever words they want informally to describe anything they like. Let's look at another term which has been redefined in the not-too-distant past: rape. There used to be no such thing as marital rape. It's only very recently that rape has been redefined to include this, from a legal perspective. Should we also be against this? Should we come up with a different word for marital rape, so as to make sure it's not the same as "real rape"?