Thread:Comments:California's same-sex marriage ban ruled unconstitutional; appeal expected/The US finally begins to crawl out of the third world/reply (12)

Here we have a false analogy and yet more guilt by association. Racial segregation was a legally enforced policy that imposed different conditions on the "segregated" groups. Even if, in theory, the amenities were equal, one school or restaurant is not the same as another and it takes coercive force or the threat thereof to make people attend only their respective facilities. The existence of "marriages" and "civil unions" does not imply the employment of any force whatsoever, since the distinction is entirely on the part of the government. If they come with identical legal provisions, they are truly identical. Two buildings or assemblies can never be identical, only possibly, roughly, analogous. Two sets of terms that contain the same text are in fact truly identical. These distinctions are, I think, intuitively obvious to an honest reader. What we're left with are yet more guilty associations, only in this case the association itself is illusory. Not that it matters, bad arguments of this kind being thoroughly irrecoverable.