Keep in mind there are a lot of people, particularly seniors who live in a loving relationship who're not homosexuals. They want to have their relationship made legal but they certainly aren't interested in marriage.There is no ‘substitute’ for marriage, either one is married or he is not. If the state contrives some contractual entity with the exact-same provisions as marriage, then it is marriage, whatever the state might call it.
But the state may not play a semantic shell game, and attempt to appease same-sex couples with a cheap imitation of marriage law, a ‘separate but equal’ approach is as illegal as the denial of access to marriage law itself.
I agree with your first statement... but I'm not sure what you're talking about in the second statement...
a government-sanctioned marriage (i.e., the kind you get when you go to the county courthouse and pick up a marriage license from the Clerk of Court) is, by definition, a "legally-recognized domestic partnership"...
but since "marriage" is a hot-button word defined differently by different people, I prefer to use the term "legally-recognized domestic partnership" to make it clear exactly what I am talking about...
and if a couple has a "legally-recognized domestic partnership", then they are, by definition, indeed "married"...
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