Oh please. I guess folks on our side of the debate haven’t cornered the market on self-importance, have we?
Listen, Alexia, if sexual intimacy is not part of your relationship, then I must ask why you feel a need to have a “civil partnership”? What exactly is the state certifying? That two people care about each other? That doesn’t make sense.
Go ahead and have a roommate. Or name her as the beneficiary in your legal papers. But it is not a marriage.
At least you admit that yours is not a marriage. (And you are correct that it’s “rude for others to presuppose that they have some kind of a right to ask” about your relationship.) But we’ve seen that a big part of this thread has boiled down to what a marriage is. **Do you think that a true marriage is linked in any way with sexual expression within that marriage?**If not, then any group of people can get married, be they male, female, two, three, or four people, right? Ashley seemed to think so, but thought that there was too much cultural resistance to that idea. But in substance, those “marriages” have as much right as a traditional marriage if sex is shut out of the equation.
Or, if you think that the definition of marriage is somehow tied to sexuality, then we have to further explore what is it about sexuality that requires a government to even recognize that relationship.
Hi surritter
We are not roommates; we acknowledge that we have a romantic relationship. We also know that we don’t want it to develop into one which is sexual; and that has been a joint-decision
No, a Civil Partnership is not a marriage. We know what a marriage is. That is only ever between a man and a woman. My partner was once married (er, to a man); that was not in a Catholic Church (in another Church since he had been married before) but was nevertheless, a marriage
What we have is not a marriage; we believe that we are soul-mates; if only one of us were a different gender …… (will that bring out the self-important here?). But joking aside, what I wanted to point out here is that there are people in same-sex relationships who know that a same-sex relationship is outside the scope of a true marriage
We did not enter into a Civil Partnership because we need the state to permit us to love one another; we had done that for many, many years anyway; the Civil Partnership Act is a fairly recent development in our part of the world. Neither did we do this so that we can obtain some kind of validity of our relationship from other people; we don’t need that either. Infact, most people, baring family and very close friends are not even aware that we have done this. For example, I have never told anyone at my place of business; I simply invented a ‘boyfriend’ (probably a sin but one which I can live with, under the circumstances) who I meet from time-to-time; stops tongues from wagging; also stops unwanted advances dead in their tracks
Does a marriage have to include sex? I suppose so. I think that the Bible says so; however, that is something which will never affect us and therefore we have not put a lot of thought and energy into finding the answer. I think that in the case of a heterosexual couple, sex is something which is important if they are going to have children. We are not and therefore it is not something which is necessary. And I suppose that we are ‘lucky’ for our physical yearnings for each other are not so strong; they are there but it is something that if not done, will not automatically trigger an extinction level event
Why a Civil Partnership? OraLabora has explained it well so I will quote him:
Having a civil union assures certain things like survivor benefits such as transfer of pension benefits to the surviving “spouse”, etc.
My mother and her sister were in exactly such a situation: they lived together after my father died, for 30 years in a mutually co-dependent sibling relationship. Yet because they were siblings, my mother had no claim on my aunt’s pension or other survivor benefits, for instance, which would not be the case if they were “married”. It is unfair, but then if Alexia and her partner have an opportunity to avoid this issue, and bully for them.
If Alexia and her partner chose to contract a civil union to assure survivor benefits, or share an employer benefits plan, using laws at their disposal, that is their business. They are living in a chaste relationship. That is also their business.
I don’t see the issue here. They love each other, they’re being chaste, they support one another and they are legally entitled to contract a civil union to maximize their fiscal benefits. …
In addition, we are fearful of what our families will do if one of us was incapacitated (in a coma, or something similar). Would our families assume the central role in our treatment plan? We think so; they would cut the other one out completely: bigotry is not just alive on the internet but it exists in the real world too and that is where it does the most harm
We don’t go around telling people that we are Civil Partners, or even, partners; we are not ashamed that we love one another but we do know that people will leap to all sorts of conclusions. Human nature???
In conclusion, I was merely trying to point out to the author of this thread that her understanding of a same-sex relationship may be quite different from what her friend and her partner are in. And in any case, since I do not go around telling heterosexuals, gay men, bisexuals, lesbians or any other kind of sexuals what they must do to live their lives within the context of Catholicism, I personally will take great offence if someone else were to think that they know better than me, especially because, all they will be doing is making assumptions and making a pigs ear of it
