Oh, no, it's second-class citizenship. 'Blasphemy' (as defined as: The act or offense of speaking sacrilegiously about God or sacred things; profane talk.) shouldn't even come into the equation because religion has zero place in the American government. There are laws (separation of church and state - for good reason) specifically prohibiting the kind of bullstuff you're blabbering about from being taken into consideration. Also, once again, federal marriage =! religious marriage. If you can't grasp this concept, I'm not even going to bother you.
Federal marriage is simply the federal government's recognition and encouragement of a religious institution. A civil union is a strictly legal, secular affair that doesn't offer incentives to promote childbearing, since yknow, gay couples can't reproduce naturally.
Here's something for you to think on: Why is it, when two atheists are married, it's referred to as 'marriage'? That's offensive to all the western religious folk! They don't believe in God, how dare they take part in a FEDERAL, GOVERNMENTAL, NON-RELIGIOUS ceremony? Marriage may have been a religious thing in the past but it is no longer.
When two atheist heteroloveuals are married, they still have the same capacity to produce children that the government incentives pay for. They're also a man and a woman, which to Christianity makes it legitimate and unoffensive, regardless of their religious beliefs, since intercourse within wedlock is always preferable than without.
Welcome to why 'civil unions' are born from nothing but intolerance. Muslims can get married here, and atheists, and all these non-Christians and it's marriage but because gay people want to get married they have to call it something entirely different because gay people aren't 'good enough'. That's the only reason. Refer to the brown townogy regarding white/black fountains and you'll understand just how you're coming off. "Why are you complaining that you get a colored-folk only restroom? It's just the same as the white restroom! Get over it! It's offensive to white people!"
Marriage is the religious recognition of the union between a man and a woman. No matter who the two people involved in it are, as long as they're capable of producing healthy offspring together, it satisfies the prerequisites of nearly every religion out there. You can't compare resistance to gay marriage to Jim Crowe laws, not only are the two laughably in congruent, but it's tremendously offensive and belittling black rights activists.
Also, for the last loving time - IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH BEING RECOGNIZED BY A RELIGION. Federal marriages DO NOT have to be recognized by a religion to be legitimate. You with me on this? Federal. Government. Not religious. Religion does not enter the equation because it is NOT A RELIGIOUS CEREMONY BEING PERFORMED. Still with me? Good.
You can straw man my argument all you like, but the fact remains that there is a separate term for it because marriage is a religious institution. If you really want to posit a legitimate rebuttal, try coming up with reasons as to why gays require financial encouragement on behalf of the federal government to produce offspring, when homoloveual couples are biologically incapable of producing children on their own.
The purpose of marriage has been to construct family units, since it's inception. In the Bible and the Quran, the whole reason for the unity between a man and a woman is to produce and raise offspring. Gay couples can't do that. There is no reason for gay couples to need marriage anyways, it's an indulgence of hedonistic behavior that wants legal recognition and recently, pines for free money from the federal reserve that they aren't entitled. It's disgusting that opposition to the degradation of an ancient and sacred tradition is equated to keeping blacks in chains or cooking hebrews in ovens. There is perfectly legitimate reason to distinguish between a sanctified, child-bearing union of two biologically capable individuals, and the partnership between two forgetbuddies with feelings for each other.
Also, because I missed this loving idiocy:
America was not, and never will be a Christian nation. We are an atheist state.
Do you even read what you post before you start screaming off in the name of justice? The Treaty of Tripoli is an agreement that neither states could go to war for religious reasons, and purported the government as non-fundamentalist. "Secular" isn't atheist. Secularism is being concerned with matters of the material before the immaterial, which nearly every post-renaissance government in the west has been.
The fact that the President has to swear on a bible as part of the Oath to Office, and the fact that we've been observing the "National Day of Prayer" every year since 1798, is a testament to Christian principles ingrained in our society.
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