For thousands of years, individual human beings have formed unions for romantic, sexual, familial, and economic purposes. The vast majority of these unions comprise one man and one or more women, and the people involved are known as oppolovers, (because they desire romantic, sexual, familial, and economic union with persons of the opposite sex.) Most societies have created a legal institution known as cobonding, in which oppolovers publicy register their romantic, sexual, familial, and economic union. Because societies seem to work better when people cobond, people in cobonded unions enjoy privileges denied to people in un-cobonded unions.

A small minority of people who form romantic, sexual, familial, and economic unions are of the same sex. Such people are known as equilovers, for obvious reasons. Equilover unions are mostly indistinguishable from oppolover unions, as equilovers and oppolovers behave similarly -- they smile at each other over candlelight, argue about who should take out the garbage, raise children, forget each other's birthdays, purchase real estate together, heat up chicken noodle soup when the flu strikes, pick out drapes together, complain about each other's friends, and have sex (although equilovers engage in somewhat different sex acts than oppolovers). Oppolover and equilover unions differ only in that the members of oppolover unions have differently shaped genitals, while the members of equilover unions have similarly shaped genitals.

Also, equilovers are not allowed to cobond. This is because oppolovers have always hated and persecuted equilovers. The oppolovers doing the hating and persecuting have never explained in any satisfactory way why they hate and persecute equilovers, although they often cite orders given by an invisible man who lives in the sky and made everything and loves everybody and holds all possible knowledge and power and cares intently about what people do with the bits of flesh between their legs. The hating and persecuting oppolovers admit they didn't receive the orders directly from the invisible man; the invisible man gave the orders to special people who lived many centuries beforehand, and the special people wrote the orders down in various books. Based on the orders given by the invisible man, the hating and persecuting oppolovers not only banned equilover cobonding, but forbade equilovers to form the romantic, sexual, familial, and economic unions they desired, with punishments ranging from fines and imprisonment to torture and death. They did this even though equilover unions harm nobody, and equilovers are generally peaceful people who mind their own business.

In recent decades in some countries, many oppolovers have come to believe that equilover unions are not a bad thing, and certain countries have eliminated all or some of their laws banning equilover activity. More and more equilovers have chosen to live openly as equilovers, which had not been possible before. Many equilovers have begun to argue that they should be allowed to cobond, pointing out that cobonded oppolovers enjoy many basic rights denied to those in equilover unions, including parental rights, access to health insurance, and inheritance rights.

Recently, judicial authorities with jurisdiction over a small area in one large country ruled that equilovers must be allowed to cobond. This has angered some oppolovers who still believe in the orders given by the invisible man. The invisible man's orders, they say, state clearly that to live as an equilover is wrong, and that after equilovers die the invisible man takes them to a place where they suffer the most awful torture imaginable for all eternity. (The equilovers counter that, assuming the invisible man exists, and also assuming that he loves everybody as much as the oppolovers who believe in him are always saying he does, and also assuming that he is all-powerful and all-knowing, he would not punish people so harshly for making an honest mistake, at least not without explaining the rules a little more clearly in person or without making a general announcement to everybody, instead of whispering in the ears of a few special people who lived thousands of years ago and may not have been listening very carefully.)

Anyway, some oppolovers who believe in the invisible man are now trying to prevent equilovers from cobonding by correcting the supreme legal document of the small area of the large country, and other oppolovers who believe in the invisible man are trying to correct the supreme legal document of the large country itself. They call these changes the Defense of Cobonding Correction. This baffles the equilovers, who point out that they are not attacking cobonding, and that cobonded oppolovers will keep all of their rights no matter how many equilovers get cobonded.

The oppolovers who believe in the invisible man state that they wish to Protect Families. This phrase confuses the equilovers, who protest that they love their families (that is, their fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters) and have no intention of destroying them.

The oppolovers who believe in the invisible man clarify the point: when they say Protect Families, they really mean Protect Children. Cobonding, they argue, exists to foster stability in raising children, and because equilovers cannot create a pregnancy together, they do not deserve the privilege of cobonding. This idea confounds the many equilovers caring for kids from a previous cobonding; or rearing children obtained through adoption, artificial insemination, or surrogate motherhood. If cobonding benefits children, they wonder, wouldn't society gain by allowing equilover parents to cobond? Equilovers not raising children point out that many oppolovers enjoy the benefits of cobonding despite not bearing offspring, and anyway the institution of cobonding exists for many reasons beyond the rearing of children, or else oppolovers would wait until the birth of their children to get cobonded, and would dissolve their cobonds once their children reached adulthood.

The oppolovers who believe in the invisible man usually short-circuit debate at this point by reading, in loud voices filled with righteous certainty, some of the orders given by the invisible man to the special people thousands of years ago (skipping over the many orders that contradict each other; as well as the orders that are plainly misogynistic, genocidal, psychopathic, or silly).

That's the situation, as far as I understand it.

+posted by Lawrence @ 2/15/2004 11:55:00 PM