I wish it was marriage but the country isn't ready yet.

And I know a lot of good conservatives who are fine with civil unions but cannot swallow the idea of gay marriage.

CUs are a start, especially if they include all the state benefits and require the larger employers to provide benefits equiv to that received by hetero couples.

Marriage, or CUs are about a lot of things, but the key one is society's respect for couples, str8 and gay, As well as financial benefits and helping to insure that people have someone they can count on in bad times. Which BTW is a benefit to all of us.

US wise 6 states including DC have marriage, about 9 civil unions. Which about mirrors the situation world wide on the number of CU nations vs Marriage nations.

regards to all

er,
...a move that some Maryland political realists would like to see here.

All respect to the previous poster, but I think you've been hoodwinked. Rhode Island and New York are *specifically* said to be statistically ready, if you want to go by percentages alone -- and I don't believe the public has any say in this matter. By citing those percentages, I am being EXTREMELY generous. Still, a vocal and screechingly loud minority is making it sound like this is the worst idea and the end of civilization, and it is THEM you are hearing. I agree with Freedom to Marry that this is ridiculous. What is Rhode Island doing? Cowing to pressure. What is New York doing? They might not succeed this year, but they're pushing like CRAZY and doing EVERYTHING they can, legally, economically, and politically, like a freight train that won't be stopped. Because the anti-gay are so violently, violently opposed to this, you need a great deal of effort, a screeching effort, to get it through. NO ONE is doing that except for NY and California. THAT is why it's failing in Maryland and RI. Thanks for reading.

If I can't file a joint tax return with my "civil unioned partner", then I am a second class citizen. Civil unions are kind of like telling Blacks they can sit in the center of the bus !

Wayne... using the tax filing aspect as the standard of "good" or meaningful is an example of ignoring the "political realist" aspect (incremental progress) that adx asserts doesn't matter.

It does matter.

Small(er) steps, CU vs marriage, avoiding the semantic nonsense arguments (see the 1000's of pointless comments in this venue during the session)... is about gaining those actually meaningful incremental steps a few states at a time toward the eventual full on Federal recognition.

This will still take another twenty years to do it this way... but NOT doing it this way will take even longer if that would work at all.

Drive on the east coast and you'll understand the push for gay marriage. Tailgating is rampant; it is considered a birthright to ride someone's ass.