Writing for PinkNews Murray Lipp, administrator of the Facebook page “Gay Marriage USA”, shares his views about the differences between the terms “gay marriage” and “marriage equality”.
1. Introduction
Not a day goes by that I don’t think about “gay marriage” and the issues associated with it. Being the administrator of “Gay Marriage USA” on Facebook I am daily discussing all manner of issues relating to same-sex marriage and noticing how people view and present the issue. When I started the page in 2011 on Facebook I made a very conscious decision to include the words “gay marriage” in the title in an effort to tap into the high recognition value that this term has. Clearly identifying and labeling a cause helps greatly in getting people to support it.
In the last two years, however, on a number of occasions people have asked me to either change the name of the page and/or to stop referring to the topic as “gay marriage” making comments such as: “it’s not gay marriage – it’s marriage” or “it’s not gay marriage – it’s marriage equality.”
