When civil unions came along a decade ago, right-wingers expressed outrage that same-sex couples got "marriage by another name." (That's kind of like calling a studio apartment a "house by another name," of course. Civil unions are a second-class status, but still preferable to the third-class status of no recognition at all.) Then same-sex marriage got its long-overdue debut, and the Overton window shifted. Right-wingers started saying that of course they supported same-sex couples getting all the legal and financial rights of marriage - it was just that the word marriage was so special and precious that the word itself had to be protected. They supported civil unions.
Except, as Hawaii's governor Linda Lingle illustrated this week, they'll happily snatch away civil unions when given the opportunity. And her rationale was breathtaking.
A bit of history: In 1993 Hawaii was the first state to have a judge rule in favor of same-sex marriage. However, the decision was stayed pending appeal. In the intervening time the voters passed a state constitutional amendment allowing the legislature to ban same-sex marriage, which it did. This was also a large part of the impetus for the federal Denial (excuse me, "Defense") of Marriage Act, passed by all those state's-rights-loving congresscritters and signed by Bill Clinton in 1996.
Recently Hawaii's legislature passed a law approving civil unions, giving same-sex couples all the state-level rights of marriage. It fell just shy of the number of votes needed to override a veto, so the decision came down to Governor Lingle. In her explanation for the veto, she tried to pretend she was being fair and balanced:
Few could be unmoved by the poignant story told to me in my office by a young, Big Island man who recounted the journey he had taken to bring himself to tell his very traditional parents that he was gay. I was similarly touched by the mother who in the same office expressed anguish at the prospect of the public schools teaching her children that a same gender marriage was equivalent to their mother and father’s marriage.
There are, of course, many deeply moving stories she could have mentioned about same-sex couples affected by being denied the basic civil rights that heterosexual couples take for granted. I don't doubt that she heard from people who were denied hospital visitation and medical decision-making. Families that were financially devastated by a breakup or a partner's death, because they don't get the legal protections that a civil union would provide. GLBT parents who were treated as legal strangers to the children they'd raised with their partners. Instead she made vague mention of a man who had to tell his "traditional" parents the (presumably devastating) news that they had a gay son. Which would not be affected in any way by the existence of civil unions.
The "balancing" story on the other side lays bare the real motives at work here.
A mother would be "anguished" by having her child told that their GLBT neighbors' families were equal to her own. Not better, just equal. That prospect was so horrifying that same-sex couples must be denied concrete legal and financial protections. Civil unions are inferior to marriage, but not inferior enough for Linda Lingle, who was "touched" by the homophobic mother's fears.
And the real harm that comes to same-sex couples' children when they're not only told that their families are unequal, but treated unequally under the law? She's not so deeply moved by that, apparently.