According to Americablog, Ehrlich also has an openly homosexual chief of staff.

I'm no friend of the gay community or gay marriage, but this law is stupid.

Conservatives aren't (supposed to be) anti-gay humanity. We're not here to make life miserable for gays. This is just petty.

Thank God marriage is being kept safe. If a gay man were allowed the comfort of his homosexual partner in his time of need, how long before the hordes of liberal judges (a worse threat than al Qaeda, according to Pat Robertson ) compel me to leave my wife and force me into matrimony with a hairy gay man?

Seriously though, I see this as the problem with using overblown rhetoric to sell a position. I see the real cause of conservative opposition to gay marriage as being that they really just don't like homosexuality. Instead of saying that, it sells better to say they are "protecting marriage". But, once you say that recognition of homosexual couples is somehow a threat to marriage, it becomes imperative to deny any kind of recognition to homosexual couples. Even where, as here, basic human compassion would indicate that the Christian thing to do is to allow a dying person the comfort of their loved one.

It is not the business of a politician to protect the sanctity of anything. Sanctity is inherent in sacred institutions and practices, no matter what else is going on around them. Politicians usually end up destroying the sanctity of anything they touch, subjecting sacred matters to the mud and dishonor of the culture wars. It is the business of government to protect the rights of members of the polity, and promote their prosperity and general welfare. Leave sanctity to the churches.

I favor the three rights enumerated by the WaPo article, although I do wonder what the other rights are that make up the "nearly a dozen rights" granted by the law.

FYI: Branding the governor a "f***ing moron" is not the sort of thing that is likely to win over folks like me who oppose gay marriage yet favor some social rights for non-married couples. I know you're angry, but I'm just sayin'...

Eric Seymour wrote:

FYI: Branding the governor a "f***ing moron" is not the sort of thing that is likely to win over folks like me who oppose gay marriage yet favor some social rights for non-married couples. I know you're angry, but I'm just sayin'...

One should have nothing to do with the other. If you or anyone else is going to make up their minds on that issue based on what I think of someone you don't know, there was no hope of rational decision making in the first place. There's no point in trying to reason someone out of a position they weren't reasoned into in the first place.

"There's no point in trying to reason someone out of a position they weren't reasoned into in the first place."

If that isn't the perfect synthesis of the entire anti-gay movement, I cannot imagine what would be.

By the way, here is the list of 11 rights that the Medical Decision Making Act grants to any couple that registers as a domestic partnership (it's not specific to gay couples, straight couples can do the same thing. Of course, straight couples could get those things automatically if they got married, while gay couples cannot):

1. The right to be treated as an immediate family member for purposes of hospital visitation

2. The right to inspect a record to permit the disinterment or reinterment of their deceased partner's body

3. The right to petition a court to enjoin certain actions of certain treating health providers.

4. The rights to accompany a partner while being transported from one health care facility to another.

5. The right to share a room with a partner in nursing homes and other related facilities.

6. The right to private visits with a partner in a nursing home.

7. The designation of being a person of "interest" in the property of a burial site.

8. In the absence of written instructions to the contrary, the right consent to a post-mortem examination (autopsy) of their deceased domestic partner.

9. In the absence of written instructions, the right to arrange for the final disposition of a deceased domestic partner's body or remains.

10. In the absence of written instructions, the right to make health care decisions for an incapacitated domestic partner.

11. In the absence of written instructions, the right to make organ/tissue donations/anatomical gifts of a deceased partner.

The authors of the legislation note that the first 7 currently cannot be secured by any type of advance directive, though all are automatically presumed to hold for a married couple. The 8th and 9th can typically be secured through a will, but since the will is not typically read until after the funeral, it's difficult to implement them - and again, married couples have them automatically. I can't imagine any principled argument against these rights, and anyone who claims that granting those rights to gay couples will "undermine the sanctity of marriage" is out of their minds (and that includes the governor of Maryland). Allowing gay couples to have these very basic protections at their time of greatest need does precisely nothing to change anyone's marriage.

Meanwhile, can we agree that homosexuals amount to less than 3% of the population and that at no time in history have they recieved more toleration than they have in these days? Has the cost of treating their many diseases exceeded a trillion dollars yet?

Their many diseases? What, like lung cancer and heart disease? I thought gays were more likely to take care of themselves than the average heterosexual male.

No, o cowardly one who wishes to remain anonymous, we can't agree on that. The percentage you cite is as questionable as some of the high estimates I've seen. They have been tolerated a great deal more than you and yours would grant and than many states currently are willing to do at other times in the past. Your last comment is just so disgusting that I can't post here what I think of you out of simple decency.

Having read the "rights", I agree with Erlich. Passing this legislation would in turn set legal precedent that could possibly give the courts justification to legallize gay marriage. Besides, I think these decisions should be left to the discretion of the hospitals anyway. I'm not comfortable with governments creating "rights" anyway, particularly when they could possibly take away the rights of the immediate families as a result of the legislation.

Personally, I thing describing the governor as a f***ing moron is the first thing I have ever read on ITA that makes me embarrassed for the site. (And that includes many reasoned arguments that I have disagreed with.)

All in all, your post nicely fits the tiresome mold: if you don't agree with me and my support for a given pro {gay, abortion, affirmative action, Israeli, Moslem} issue then you are a {homophobic, sexist, racist, anti-Semitic, intolerant-fundamentalist} bigot, because no rational person could disagree.

I'd be grateful if, instead of demonstrating an emotional fragility concerning Ed's salty language, you would instead demonstrate a rational disagreement with Ed's assertion that a homosexual partner ought to be treated as a member of the immediate family in matters of hospital visitation. I also understand Ed to be disagreeing with Gov. Ehrlich's assertion that this will somehow undermine the sanctity of marriage. I'd also like a rational explanation of how the sanctity of marriage will be undermined.

My experience has been that people's opinions on sanctity and on homosexuality have almost universally been emotional things, so I'd be delighted to see reasoned explanations of these issues with emotional responses set aside.

For me, if I set aside my emotional tendency to be squicked out by how icky homosexuality is to me and any feelings I have about marriage; then I see that these things neither break my bones nor pick my pocket and that my marriage will be as strong or weak as it's ever been, regardless of whether gays get to visit with their dying loved ones. It does me no harm, and it does the gays some good. So why the heck not?

I think these decisions should be left to the discretion of the hospitals anyway.

And the sick people themselves should have NO discretion here? If we must balance the rights of hospital administrators, who might experience mild distress at suffering another gay person to enter their facility, against the rights of another group of people, who are having their wishes about end-of-life treatment blatantly ignored, who are having their right to association blatantly ignored, who are having their ALREADY EXISTING contractual and power-of-attorney rights blatantly ignored... And these in matters of life and death, too... I think it's clear which group has a greater claim. Of course hospitals and their administrators have rights that should be respected, but the rights of the sick and helpless should come first.

Incidentally, Ed, I agree with David Heddle insofar as it is a mistake to use profanity here. Those who mistrust gays, lesbians, and their allies also suspect the whole lot of us to lack a certain dignity, and it plays into their hands to react this way.

It would be much better simply to note that the harm being done to heterosexual marriage here is remote and hypothetical at best: Even a full year after the arrival of actual same-sex marriage in Massachusetts, no ill effects on straight marriage can be found there, while the Maryland measure does nothing even close to creating same-sex marriages.

Meanwhile, the harm being done to gays and lesbians under the present conditions in Maryland is very real, it's happening now, and it's well within the power of government to stop it, merely by codifying the rights to personal association and delegation of authority that you listed above. Doing so would stop a genuine harm--and only run the risk of a theoretical harm that has never yet materialized.

Doug,

I don't know if your comment is directed at me, but I do not oppose permitting a homosexual partner full visitation rights. My reaction to Ed's language was not "emotional fragility" but disappointment. There are any number of blogs where I can read this sort of tirade directed at one side or the other. I've greatly appreciated that ITA wasn't one of those dime-a-dozen sites. Not that I think one post matters. I just hope it's not the start of a trend.

Ed,

I agree in principle with all 11 of those rights, especially since they are available to any two unmarried people who would like to grant each other those rights, regardless of the nature of their relationship.

However, if this law could be used as a precedent for a court mandating gay marriage, that would concern me. I don't see why that should be the case, so I'd like to see the explanation for that.

Also, it may be possible that Ehrlich thinks the law may undermine traditional marriage by offering *hetero* couples some of the same legal rights as marriage, yet "de-registering" would be a lot easier than a divorce? Just playing devil's advocate here...

David Heddle wrote:

All in all, your post nicely fits the tiresome mold: if you don't agree with me and my support for a given pro {gay, abortion, affirmative action, Israeli, Moslem} issue then you are a {homophobic, sexist, racist, anti-Semitic, intolerant-fundamentalist} bigot, because no rational person could disagree.

I would argue, and strongly believe, that there is no rational argument to be made on the other side. If you think there is, then by all means make one.

David,
First my apologies for ascribing your aversion to profanity as "emotional fragility." That was intemperate.

As to the larger point of profanity, I see your point about this blog having a higher standard than most. But, I don't think Ed's use was gratuitous. I see no particular problem with judicious use of profanity.

Expertise wrote:

Having read the "rights", I agree with Erlich. Passing this legislation would in turn set legal precedent that could possibly give the courts justification to legallize gay marriage. Besides, I think these decisions should be left to the discretion of the hospitals anyway.

You think that hospitals should get to decide who can and can't visit a patient, or whose organs get donated and whose don't? Great, when you're in the hospital, we'll have the hospital decide those things and not you. Or did you just mean they should get to decide for gay people but not for you? Sorry, this is a ridiculous argument. The hospitals do not have the authority to make that decision.

I'm not comfortable with governments creating "rights" anyway, particularly when they could possibly take away the rights of the immediate families as a result of the legislation.

The government is not creating rights here, though you are obviously attempting to do so. Immediate families don't have any rights here, the patient has the rights. The patient has the right to decide who gets to visit him, not the hospital and not the family. If the family decides that the patient's choice of lover is a bad one, under current law they can deny that person's right to be there. That is unconscionable. The family does not have any legitimate authority to do so and the law should be changed to reflect that.

Unless you can explain why someone other than the patient themselves, or whomever they choose, should have any authority whatsoever to make these highly personal decisions, you've got no case at all. And I doubt you really mean it anyway. I doubt you think anyone but you should make those decisions if you find yourself in that situation. And the bottom line is that to deny such a basic right as to have the comfort of loved ones during a time of personal trauma, based solely upon a hypothetical and unexplained fear that it might lead to something you don't like but have no logical reason to oppose, is nothing short of cruelty.

Jason wrote:

Incidentally, Ed, I agree with David Heddle insofar as it is a mistake to use profanity here. Those who mistrust gays, lesbians, and their allies also suspect the whole lot of us to lack a certain dignity, and it plays into their hands to react this way.

While I understand your point, I have the same response to this that I had to Eric above - anyone who would dismiss an argument because there was a bad word in it is really just engaging in a pretext for dismissing an argument they can't logically dispute. And they'd just find some other excuse to do so because, clearly, rationality is not their strong point to begin with. Those are people that are not going to be convinced regardless, and there is no point in being concerned with convincing them of anything. Secondly I would argue that profanity is sometimes justified, and surely this is a case where it is.

And they'd just find some other excuse to do so because, clearly, rationality is not their strong point to begin with.

On the other hand, profanity is not generally the hallmark of a rational argument. If I had found this post while browsing an unfamiliar blog and noticed that it resorted to calling the governor of Maryland a "f***ing moron" (almost certainly not literally true regarding the governor's intelligence), I'd have said to myself "Wingnut at work--move along, nothing to see here."

Eric Seymour wrote:

On the other hand, profanity is not generally the hallmark of a rational argument. If I had found this post while browsing an unfamiliar blog and noticed that it resorted to calling the governor of Maryland a "f***ing moron" (almost certainly not literally true regarding the governor's intelligence), I'd have said to myself "Wingnut at work--move along, nothing to see here."

And if that's all I had said, this would be a reasonable reaction. But that's two words out of a fairly long essay that includes lots of substantive argumentation showing why I reach that particular conclusion. I simply can't understand the mindset of ignoring several paragraphs of substance because there happens to be a "bad word" in it.

Ed Brayton wrote:
"I simply can't understand the mindset of ignoring several paragraphs of substance because there happens to be a "bad word" in it."

Generally I would agree with you, Ed, on this one. Unfortunately that's the problem of using profanity in print. Those who oppose your views will simply devote their time to the use of the word in question in order to avoid defending the logic (or illogic) of their beliefs. From reading the thread, Eric Seymour & Co. have succeeded.

But now it's time to nail them on their argument that some people are worthy of discrimination because of their sexual preference. Eric & Co., can you defend your opposition to gays excercising their consitutional right to the same benefits of marriage already exercised by others, without invoking God or tradition (the lazy man's way to avoid actually thinking something over)?

Note I'm not trying to be intemperate. However, I haven't heard a single argument against extending to homosexuals their rightful privileges to marry that haven't been based on either God or tradition. As I've mentioned here before, Jesus long ago said that God's business and government's business are not interrelated. As for tradition: Under such an argument, blacks would still be slaves, men would still ride horses to work and surgeries would still be painful and unsanitary.

Well, RiShawn, I see you have used the lazy man's way of engaging in a debate--by lumping everyone who doesn't completely agree with your position into a single group, in this case "Eric & Co." (I'm a corporation now? Cool!) If you'd actually read this thread, you'd have noticed I endorse all 11 rights granted by the legislation, though I can understand the concern about unintended consequences.

I think it should be self-evident why using profanity and ad hominem insults is counter-productive to having a reasoned discussion. Then again, Ed's bold-face disclaimer at the beginning of the article warned us that it would be more of a rant than a dialogue, so perhaps we should humor him. (However, I'd like to see ITA remain a "family-friendly" site, so I'm unhappy with the use of the "f-bomb.")

As to the debate over gay marriage (which isn't, strictly speaking, the topic of this post), I've engaged in that debate more times than I care to remember. It's obvious you already have your mind made up. If you want to read what I've written about it before, see the comments to this post. There's a lot more reasoning there opposed to gay marriage than just "God or tradition."

RiShawn:

However, I haven't heard a single argument against extending to homosexuals their rightful privileges to marry that haven't been based on either God or tradition.

I think you hit the nail on the head. Some of us do oppose gay marriage for religious reasons. Such a person might be concerned that Ed's proposal opens the door to gay marriage. The fact that Ed didn't (as far as I can tell) explicitly endorse gay marriage, but by your second comment you had segued into a challenge concerning gay marriage, gives credibility to the foot-in-the-door concern.

By the way, what is a "rightful privilege?" Is it a right, or a privilege?

Also, it is not true that "Jesus long ago said that God's business and government's business are not interrelated." In fact, in Rom 13:1 we are told by Paul: "Every person is to be in subjection to the governing authorities for there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God." Far from "not interrelated" the bible tells us that rulers, whoever they may be, good or evil, rule at the pleasure of God's sovereignty.

Finally, some us actually agree with Ed's proposals. Our focus on his language was not an attempt to avoid the debate, but a lament that he sullied the good name of ITA for no reason better than he was angry. If anger were a valid reason to call people a "f***ing moron" and a "vile bigot", we would have seen such expressions elsewhere on ITA. Somehow others have avoided, in spite of their (at times) anger, from descending to that level.

Rishawn Biddle wrote:

Generally I would agree with you, Ed, on this one. Unfortunately that's the problem of using profanity in print. Those who oppose your views will simply devote their time to the use of the word in question in order to avoid defending the logic (or illogic) of their beliefs. From reading the thread, Eric Seymour & Co. have succeeded.

Those who would focus exclusively on a single bad word and ignore the substance are not worth worrying about anyway. They do so only as pretext and they will simply find another way to change the subject. However, I think you're painting with too broad a brush here. Eric, while he doesn't like the fact that I used a bad word, has not really disagreed with the substance of what I said and has said that he agrees that the bill should have been signed.

David Heddle wrote:

I think you hit the nail on the head. Some of us do oppose gay marriage for religious reasons. Such a person might be concerned that Ed's proposal opens the door to gay marriage. The fact that Ed didn't (as far as I can tell) explicitly endorse gay marriage, but by your second comment you had segued into a challenge concerning gay marriage, gives credibility to the foot-in-the-door concern.

I am an enthusiastic supporter of allowing gay couples to get married. But this has nothing to do with that. Even if one opposes gay marriage, how on earth could one justify denying a dying patient the right to have their lifelong partner by their side, or to allow them to decide who speaks for them when they cannot speak? There is no rational argument to be made against allowing that. No one here has attempted to make one, and I dare say none can be made. It's a position that can only be taken based upon pure bigotry.

Finally, some us actually agree with Ed's proposals. Our focus on his language was not an attempt to avoid the debate, but a lament that he sullied the good name of ITA for no reason better than he was angry. If anger were a valid reason to call people a "f***ing moron" and a "vile bigot", we would have seen such expressions elsewhere on ITA. Somehow others have avoided, in spite of their (at times) anger, from descending to that level.

While you may have an argument to make about using profanity, there is no such case to be made against calling someone a vile bigot - unless of course you want to pretend that there are no vile bigots in the world, and no one would do so. You could perhaps argue that my use of the phrase is unjustified in this particular case, but you haven't attempted to do so. You've only claimed that any use of the phrase is bad. If I called the grand wizard of the KKK a vile bigot, would you object to that because it "sullies the good name of ITA"? I am far more concerned about whether it's justified than whether it is polite, and in this case I believe it is entirely justified. Anyone who can applaud the denial of such a basic right to emotional support in such a time of need and has the incredible audacity to declare that denial to be standing up for morality can only be motivated by sheer bigotry. There is nothing moral about that, it is cruel and inhumane. There are times when weasel words and politeness must fall by the wayside and spades be called spades; this is bigotry, pure and simple.

Ed, I never made an argument that hospitals should have rights over the patient, I said the government should leave the rules up to the hospital.

It's a common practice for a hospital to allow visitation leniancy for the next-of-kin and immediate family, therefore I didn't grant anyone any rights that haven't been recognized prior to this bill. Since gay marriage is not legal in Maryland I don't see a legitimate argument as to why those rights should be taken from the family and passed on to another person in a state that doesn't recognize they are married. In most aspects the immediate family has the right to do these things if the patient is not capable of making these decisions on his own.

As for the argument that hospitals don't have the authority to dictate a number of these provisions, that's ridiculous. If that's the case, then patients would be able to have as many visitors as they want, they would be able to dictate who and how many could accompany them in transport, they could allow anyone to make decisions on their behalf. None of these things happen at any hospital I've seen.

Now if the patient has a living will or any other document that has been notarized and gives specific orders as to who can do what, that's something that should be enforceable. But when you draw legislation that attempts to establish specific rights for patients that possibly be used as a legal precedent, I think it should be vetoed.

As Margaret Marshall, chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court noted, there is no such thing as gay marriage. There is marriage. And the state was unable to make rational argument to deny marriage to same-sex couples.

Marriage. Not "gay marriage".

BTW, lest anyone wonder, I am gay, and since I reside in MA, I am married.

Expertise wrote:

Ed, I never made an argument that hospitals should have rights over the patient, I said the government should leave the rules up to the hospital.

Did you actually read the list of rights in the bill we're talking about? Why should either the hospital or the government have the authority to decide who gets to decide whether a patient's organs get donated, the right to demand an autopsy, or for that matter get to decide who is and isn't an immediate family member?

Take Jason's case. Jason is in a long-term committed relationship with Scott, a relationship his parents do not accept or recognize. He is not entirely estranged from his family, but they refuse to allow his partner to visit their home or even be spoken of in their presence. Scott is the person that Jason wants as his legal and medical proxy, but now that this law has been rejected, the hospital would likely not recognize his wishes and would transfer that power and recognition to those he explicitly does not want to have it. Neither the government, the hospital or his family has any legitimate right to make that decision for him, only he should have control over that decision. But the governor just vetoed any chance he had of having his rights in this regard respected as a matter of law.

And this is hardly a rare circumstance. Virtually everyone who has a number of gay friends knows at least one of them who has had something like this happen, where the person who is closest to them, the person they share their life with and want to make all of those decisions for them if they can't, is treated like a virtual stranger by hospitals or funeral homes.

It's a common practice for a hospital to allow visitation leniancy for the next-of-kin and immediate family, therefore I didn't grant anyone any rights that haven't been recognized prior to this bill. Since gay marriage is not legal in Maryland I don't see a legitimate argument as to why those rights should be taken from the family and passed on to another person in a state that doesn't recognize they are married. In most aspects the immediate family has the right to do these things if the patient is not capable of making these decisions on his own.

That is exactly the point. The hospitals tend to treat it as a given that the family gets all the authority. But what if the patient doesn't want them to have that authority or that leniency, and instead wants their mate to have it instead? For straight couples, it's automatic - the spouse gets it by default, not the family. But for gay couples, the mate can be entirely shut out of the process either by a hospital or by the family even if they don't want it. And often, even when they have power of attorney and all the necessary paperwork.

I know it's easy for you to dismiss this out of hand because you've never been through it. Or maybe you just don't care. But for someone like Jason, or for any number of people I know and care about, this is very real and could end up being very damaging should something happen to them. They take all of the necessary legal precautions to make sure they're covered, and often times they're still ignored by the hospital. Follow the link above and look at the testimony of the people it's happened to and ask yourself how you would feel if you were in their shoes. And if after that you just don't care and think it's justified to deny them control over their most personal and difficult situations, then there is no point in trying to hold a conversation with you about it.

Now if the patient has a living will or any other document that has been notarized and gives specific orders as to who can do what, that's something that should be enforceable. But when you draw legislation that attempts to establish specific rights for patients that possibly be used as a legal precedent, I think it should be vetoed.

A living will IS "legislation taht attempts to establish specific rights for patients". But those rights are limited and often ignored because the law gives far too much control to the families as a matter of default. Take Jason's example again. Suppose he gets into an accident and is in a coma. His parents come to the hospital and tell them that Scott, the man Jason loves and shares his life with, is not allowed to be there at his side. Now it may be that they've got sufficent legal measures taken to prevent that, but the default is going to be that the family's decision stands. That decision could be delayed for days or even weeks, challenged in court by the family, or even overruled entirely because Maryland law does not recognize that Scott is anything more than a stranger to Jason. All of this will be incredibly painful and entirely contrary to the wishes of the only person whose wishes should matter, the patient. The family doesn't have a "right" to deny Scott the place in Jason's life that Jason wants him to have, so the claim that any of this is a violation of the family's rights is false on its face. There is no such right. And again, you can put your head in teh sand and pretend that this isn't a problem because it doesn't affect you. But it's very real and very destructive for a lot of people that I care about. And their rights matter just as much as yours.

It was precisely this sort of situation, which has happened to people I know, that convinced me that some sort of a legal recognition for partnerships was necessary. (To tell the truth, I think there's a need for a broader sort of "household" contract than simple gay marriage--a great many people might trust anyone but their parents with their lives.)

Eric:
My apologies; I should have been more subtle in my distinctions between the various people who oppose extending gays the same privileges due to them under not only the Constitution, but based on the Founding documents that have made it clear that all men (and women) are created equal.

As for the use of "Eric & Co.," that's a standard line that I use to sum up a position shared by a number of people. I'm not addressing you as a corporation; it's just the use of writers license that all writers are allowed. My apologies again if you are offended.

All that aside, the problem I ultimately argue, Eric, is that this is the very reason why gay couples understandably argue they deserve equal protection and privilege before the law. You argue that gay marriage and this incident aren't the same issue. Please. As Erlich has noted in his own statement, they are the same issue. And no bit of legal gymnastics on anyone's part will make it not so.

If marital privileges and protections aren't extended to gays then how can receive protection under the law in the first place? As we see here in the Maryland situation, any law that extends any sort of privilege or protection to gay couples, even if not worded as marriage, can be rejected simply because also happens to be, as one would put it, an incident of marriage. By saying gay couples are only allowed some privileges and protections, one is essentially saying that they deserve none.

You say that you're not against extending some privileges and protections to gay couples. Yet guess what, these privileges and protections can be logically argued as incidents of marriage. So how can Gov. Erlich be wrong for to rejecting this bill on those grounds?

Now if I had my druthers, I'd get government out of the marriage business in the first place. Actually, until now, government has been getting out of it, especially in deciding who can get married in the first place (the Loving case, for example). But if we're going to have governments in the marriage business, then we have to insist that all privileges and protections extended to some of its citizens must be extended to all. Period.

Meanwhile, I have read your arguments and while they do go a bit beyond religion and tradition, your 'utilitarian' argument makes little sense because government is not in the business of deciding the consistencies of families in the first place. There's noting in the U.S. Constitution that grants our federal government that status. And while states would be granted that under the Bill of Rights, the trend -- until now -- has been for states to get out of such decisions. States no longer decide which races can marry or whether they can intermarry. Same with ethnicities. And the Supreme Court has already made it clear in Loving that they can't do so.

But ultimately, that's at the heart of our disagreement. You think government ought to have the ability to decide what constitutes a family in legal terms, if not in social terms. You can tell where I stand.

David Heddle wrote:

"Some of us do oppose gay marriage for religious reasons. Such a person might be concerned that Ed's proposal opens the door to gay marriage. The fact that Ed didn't (as far as I can tell) explicitly endorse gay marriage, but by your second comment you had segued into a challenge concerning gay marriage, gives credibility to the foot-in-the-door concern."

I don't think you should be concerned at all as to whether homosexuals marry as you shouldn't be concerned if a black man marries a white woman or someone of Chinese descent marries a Navajo Indian. So long as they don't injure your life, liberty or property or anyone else's, it's none of the government's business who exercises the privileges and protections extended to married couples and it's none of yours.

As far as the foot in the door argument? If you do endorse granting some privileges and protections of marriage to gay couples -- and let's be honest, these protections would be available to straights like myself along with the rest of the menu -- then why object to granting it all?

Actually, I would argue that endorsing such limited protections and privileges is the first step. And since I'm for extending marital rights and privileges to gays, yet understand that it may take decades for opponents of exending marriage privileges such as yourself to realize that our moral core won't fall apart, a limited offering is a proper first step.

I would actually go further and say that limited rights, in essence, a long-term strategy of incremental change, is the strategy some are pursuing. They may not say so, but let's be honest: It is. And it's sensible at that.

Consider the Black civil rights movement. It took nearly a century for Whites to stop using government power to enslave blacks and at least pay lip service to equal protection under the law; it took another for them to actually go from paying lip service to that to actually extending those them. That Blacks were do these rights, privileges and protections in the first place didn't matter at the end. We got them.