The American Spectator

Real American| 3.16.09 @ 2:08PM

Traditional marriage is what needs to be preserved. Ending it isn't a compromise position. Allowing federal civil unions just gives the radical gays a victory they haven't earned and paves the way for either getting rid of marriage laws completely or recognizing gay marriage, which is exactly what we are trying to prevent.

Moreover, religious liberty is protected by the US Constitution. Gay marriage and "civil unions" are not. Protecting religious liberty isn't getting anything for what would be given up. And in the long run, the religious side would still be harassed by the gay side until they keep quiet about the perversion that is homosexuality. That's no compromise.

BJC| 3.16.09 @ 7:35PM

I'm not persuaded either that any real sustainable compromise over government-enforced redefinition of marriage is possible. The objective of the "gay rights" crowd is government-mandated recognition of homosexual behavior as making for an "identity class"; that goal simply cannot be reconciled with (what Real American so rightly points out are) existing guarantees of religious liberty within the U.S. Constitution and state constitutions. I suspect that what's afoot herein is attempting to peel off even more libertarian and Libertarian Party support for replacing government recognition of natural husband-wife marriage that yields nongovernmental family creation with "civil unions" created at the behest of the metastasizing state. I'm really at pains to understand the current-day Libertarian Party confusions over the facts that: (1) natural marriage is a bulwark against overgrowth of the intrusive state; and (2) a government big enough to know about claimed homosexuality-based identity and to enforce approved attitudes toward it cannot be contained. The only real compromise that would actually work without eviscerating real existing constitutional rights would be to enact a "civil union" status for any adult pair who cannot legally marry but which scrupulously avoids any government recognition of homosexuality -- a planned benefits-sharing relationship not rooted in government-recognized sexual contact, open perhaps to an adult child caring for a single aging parent or an adult caring for a disabled sibling or friends simply sharing responsibility for each other in the absence of family who might otherwise do so.