Impersonal Unions, NJ looses Marriage

This is the strangest thing I have ever heard:

MOUNT LAUREL, N.J. -- In inheritance, health insurance, parental rights and virtually everything else but name, gay couples in New Jersey would be treated the same as married couples under a bill introduced this week.

The bill to authorize civil unions refers to couples not as "spouses" but as "parties," language the head of the state's main gay rights group considers "putrid (Gay.com)."

Parties?  Not Partners?  Okay, the scary word "Marriage" is avoided, which I suppose rules out the word spouse, but to resort to such an impersonal word as party?  We are parties to each other?

Perhaps these lawmakers have watched too many episodes of Queer as Folk.  While we like to party, attend parties, and of  course, throw the best parties in the world, but I have only met a couple of queens that I would refer to as parties themselves.  Maybe we should embrace this term and take it away from the breeders so in future all parties will be considered, "O, so gay." ;)

We have been through this separate but equal crap before, and maybe someday will stand up like South Africa did Nov 30th and just legalize Gay marriage.   I guess it takes time to learn that separate but equal is never equal.