The answer to the question is 'No.'
That was the short answer to the Legislature's question of whether or not Civil Unions would satisfy the courts decision in the Goodridge case.
A bit of back history for those who don't know. On Nov. 18th the SJC handed down its decision concerning whether it was constituional for the state to withhold marriage benefits from same-sex couples. The court ruled that nothing in the laws said that and the state made no compelling argument that would be acceptable to provide for the disparity of only allowing opposite-sex couples to marry.
The state obstensively said marriage was to encourage families and child-rearing. That could have been a compelling argument except that no one is denied marriage if one or both parties are infertile. Also, especially in MA, same-sex couples can adopt children so they have the option to raise children of their own, thus creating families.
When the SJC ruled they stayed their decsion for 180 days to allow the legislature to do "what it deems appropriate" with regard to their decision. That very day conservatives and those against gay marriage had a field day trying to stretch it to mean that this was an opportunity for the legislature to create a lesser system of joining two people together for same-sex couples such as civil unions or domestic partnership registries.
On December 12th, Massachusetts Senate President Robert Travaglini sent to the SJC, for evaluation, a bill that guaranteed just about all state benefits for marriage without calling it marriage;calling it Civil Unions instead.
The SJC came back and said that historically anything separate has inherently unequal and that nothing short of full marriage would satisfy their decision.
They said as long as their is disparity between the institution for opposite-sex vs same-sex couples there would be an inequality.
The only caveat that the court allowed would be to withdraw the use of "Civil Marriage" for all couples and call all governmentally approved unions "Civil Unions" instead.
I see either outcome (civil marriage or union) as a victory and look forward to May 18th.
The creating of a single union for all couples is important since separate institutions, even while conveying all rights and privileges, creates two classes of people. While these classes may start out equally, rules can then be further created that grant additional privileges or penalties on one and not the other. A single institution provides that all unions must be considered when deciding privileges or penalties. Same with inter-state recognition for such unions. I can guarantee that some states would use the mutliple classes to enact laws that accept one and not the other. As it is they will still try to accept unions that satisfy particular criteria, such as being of one man and one woman, but in the end they will have to accept the entire definition of the union.
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