An election disappointment

There are people who know who their gay friends and relatives are, or at least most of them. There are people who don't know. And there are people who pretend they have none.

The case for gay civil marriage is simple and compelling, and can be summarized in two sentences: There is no compelling state interest in denying equal civil rights to gay couples and straight couples, and the benefits to those gay couples who choose to marry are paramount. Religious institutions already restrict the marriages that they recognize and sanction, and civil marriage has no impact on that fact.

The benefits of marriage need not be expounded here. We all know them.

But what is so frustrating is the pretense that civil gay marriages would somehow be an unbearable assault on the religious sacrament of marriage (to use the Christian term). Catholic doctrine already does not recognize second marriages. Many religious groups, orthodox Judaism being only a single example, do not approve of cross-religion marriages. Yet these marriages are, of course, sanctioned by the civil states.

Many, including our president-elect, pretend that the solution is to have a new word for gay marriages, i.e., "civil unions". This would be sensible, as long as all civil weddings were "unions" and homosexual and heterosexual unions were held on equal terms. We could leave the word "marriage" to religion, if we wanted to. However, that is not what is proposed: Civil Unions are always a lesser option.

Thus, I find it crushing that California, the state I grew up in and arguably the most progressive state in the Union, has found it necessary to constitutionally enshrine civil discrimination. What a chance they had.