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ON PAPER and without forethought as to human nature, civil unions for gays sound harmless. However, civil unions cannot be reserved for "same-sex" couples, and that is the real danger.
The California and Vermont civil-union laws, because they are contractual laws, could not pass legal standards unless they were offered to any two people. Many heterosexual couples, when they see that civil unions offer financial advantages while being very easy to dissolve, will choose this alternative to marriage.
Thus, civil unions will promote cohabitation not only among homosexuals and lesbians but among heterosexuals as well. The civil unions grant privilege without responsibility. The group most likely to utilize civil unions is not same-sex couples but rather the elderly.
About one million elderly adults in America currently cohabit--about half a million couples. They do not marry because of inheritance, tax, and other, mostly financial, issues. Civil unions will legitimize these relationships in the eyes of the states and allow medical and social benefits they do not now have.
For example, one partner may have superior medical-insurance benefits because of having worked for the federal government or for a large corporation. His or her partner would become eligible for those same benefits under the terms of a civil union.
Civil unions will quickly become popular with young couples as well. A man will be able to share his insurance benefits with his live-in partner but can ask her to leave at any time because they are "not really" married.
Within a few decades civil unions could overtake marriages as the preferred arrangement of those who want a live-in relationship. Sound impossible? Right now only 60 percent of marriages are conducted in the church and sanctified. The rest are conducted by government officials such as judges. These marriages are secular in nature and have nothing to do with the biblical base of marriage vows. Why would these 40 percent bother to marry at all if they can have the same "privileges" of marriage in a civil union, without the potential difficulties of divorce? This group will move toward the civil union.
The fact is that the vast majority of homosexuals will not want to use civil unions. In the Dec. 1 issue of The Weekly Standard, Maggie Gallagher rightly points out that General Motors, with more than 342,000 employees, has only 166 people who have applied for health insurance for a same-sex partner. What will that figure be if the plan is opened to heterosexual couples that are simply shacked up together in civil unions? These figures should also give us pause in understanding how few homosexuals there really are compared to the power of their voices in Washington.
The problem with civil unions does not lie just in giving same-sex "couples" the privileges of marriage, but also in establishing a second class of marriage using another name that will bestow benefits to couples who want to shack up without ever really getting married.
The homosexual aspect of civil unions that is perhaps most dangerous lies within the confines of our public school system and what will be taught in sex-education classes. If same-sex civil unions are legal, will the educational system, which is basically run by the radical National Education Association, force "how-to" homosexual education on the youth of the nation? The answer is of course, the NEA will do just that. Already the NEA is working to promote "safe" homosexual-sex classes in the schools. Civil-union laws will empower that organization to push for more illustrative classes.
Lastly, even though civil unions go by a different name than marriage, they do give an important legal stamp of approval to homosexuality, which is why the majority of homosexuals are pushing this issue, even though they wouldn't actually want to be involved in a civil union. Once same-sex unions are sanctioned by law, it becomes very difficult to voice any disapproval of homosexual behavior in the schools or the workplace.
Will a boy who refuses to date another boy be singled out for psychological treatment by school authorities because he is "homophobic"? Will a teacher who voices any disapproval of homosexual behavior be more likely to face lawsuits and loss of employment? Will refusing to date someone of the same sex prove prejudice and result in workplace discipline? We have already seen cases of federal employees being threatened and punished for refusing to attend pro-homosexual seminars.
Republican leaders are beating a drum that says only that the word "marriage" is important and that as long as that word is protected they have won the battle. This is far from true. Creating a second class of marriage by another name is a danger to our society.
WILLIAM J. MURRAY is chairman of the Religious Freedom Coalition and lives in Spotsylvania County.