Social conservatives in action

From opposite ends of the country, two stories that will either make you laugh or simply shake your head.

First, from North Dakota:

North Dakota's House has agreed to repeal the state's anti-cohabitation law without a vote to spare, and Gov. John Hoeven is expected to sign it.

The law, which makes it illegal for a man and woman to live together without being married, has been part of North Dakota's code since statehood. It is listed as a sex crime among the state's criminal laws.

Okay. Sounds simple enough. Another outdated law removed from the books.

Except:

Representatives voted 48-41 on Thursday to repeal the law. It takes a minimum of 48 votes, which is a majority of the House's 94 members, to approve any measure in the state House.

That's right, the measure barely passed. Forty-one legislators voted to keep it a criminal offense.

The mind boggles.

Next we head south to sunny Largo, Fla., where the city found itself having to make a decision about whether to keep its city manager of 14 years. The sole reason? He wants to have a sex-change operation and become a woman.

City commissioners ended one of the most tumultuous weeks in Largo history Tuesday night by moving to fire City Manager Steve Stanton following his disclosure that he will have a sex-change operation.

A total of 480 people packed City Hall for a four-hour meeting during which one activist was arrested after police told her not to hand out fliers.

After listening to about 60 speakers, mostly from Largo, a majority of commissioners said they had lost confidence in Stanton's ability to lead.

That's right, fired for wanting a sex-change operation. It'll be interesting to see if the decision survives an anti-discrimination challenge, although his status as a manager makes him more vulnerable to such things, as the "ability to lead" argument shows.

I love the logic of some of the residents who wanted him fired:

"I don't want that man in office," she said. "I don't think we should be paying him $150,000 a year when he's not been truthful. We have to speak up. Of course, we don't believe in sex changes or lesbianism. They have their rights, but we do, too."

He wasn't "truthful" because he hadn't revealed his gender issue until now. Of course, if he had revealed it, he would have been attacked for "flaunting" his sexuality.

But this one takes the cake:

"If Jesus was here tonight, I can guarantee you he'd want him terminated. Make no mistake about it."

The speaker? Ron Sanders, pastor of Largo's Lighthouse Baptist Church.

Update: Churches from around the Tampa Bay area staged a 350-person rally in support of Stanton. I think they were motivated as much by revulsion at the words of Ron Sanders as anything.

civil liberties, morality, gay rights, politics, midtopia

New Jersey grants gay civil unions

New Jersey becomes the third state to allow either civil unions or marriage.

Meanwhile, a Michigan court ruled earlier this month that the state's recent gay-marriage ban also outlaws domestic-partner benefits to government employees, including those who work for public universities. The logic: health benefits cannot be provided if doing so is based on treating same-sex relationships similar to marriage.

And so while New Jersey expands freedom and fairness, Michigan trips into the minefield of litigation and unintended consequences caused by a hastily passed, too-broadly drawn constitutional amendment that singles out a minority for discrimination. Another 20 states with similar bans probably will face similar troubles -- unless they take the route Alaska took and decide the law doesn't apply to such benefits.

Of course, some people are happy that this will hurt gay families. Take Gary Glenn, president of the American Family Association's Michigan chapter:

“For the average Michigan taxpayer whose family does not receive government-paid insurance of any kind, this was a victory because Michigan taxpayers will no longer be forced to subsidize homosexual relationships among government workers as if those relationships are equal or similar to marriage,” he says.

That logic is so disingenuous, not to mention mean-spirited, I don't even know where to begin.

The AFA, by the way, also warns against witchcraft, specifically attacking a middle school newspaper for publishing an 8th-grade girl's article on her Wiccan aunt and Wiccan beliefs. This is a little ironic, considering they have a "religious freedom" section of their Web site where they purport to stand up for religious expression.

Such routine hypocrisy aside, it'll be interesting to see if there is a second wave of constitutional amendments amending the gay-marriage bans. I wouldn't expect outright repeals, but at the very least we might see language exempting domestic partner benefits or allowing civil unions. And the lessons of these first states -- moral as well as legal -- will likely slow the rush to adopt similar measures in the remaining states.

I stand by my prediction that in 20 years, the country will largely look back on this brouhaha and ask "what was the big deal"? Gay marriage laws will go the way of sodomy laws, falling state by state until the Supreme Court repeals the last few holdouts. Because manifest unfairness rarely survives for long, even when it involves something as visceral as homosexuality.

gay marriage, politics, midtopia

Two setbacks for gay marriage

In New York, the state's highest court said an existing ban on gay marriage is constitutional, and so it's up to legislators to remove it.

The Court of Appeals in a 4-2 decision said New York's marriage law is constitutional and clearly limits marriage to between a man and a woman. Any change in the law should come from the state Legislature, Judge Robert Smith wrote.

"We do not predict what people will think generations from now, but we believe the present generation should have a chance to decide the issue through its elected representatives," Smith wrote.

The case featured one interesting image: Elliot Spitzer, who supports gay marriage, defending the state's gay-marriage ban in his role as attorney general. Anyone want to bet whether Republicans will try to use that fact to weaken Spitzer's support among gay-rights supporters?

Hours later, Georgia's top court reinstituted a gay marriage ban that had been invalidated on a technicality by a lower court.

In an ideal world, the state would get out of the marriage business altogether and leave it to churches. But that's not going to happen.

So I take the long view on things like this. Can we codify anti-gay sentiment? Yes. But we can also uncodify it when the time comes. Each succeeding generation is less and less concerned about their neighbors' sexual orientation. In 20 years these laws will start to be repealed, viewed with the same faint tinge of embarassment that haunted anti-miscegnation laws in their last dreary days.

In the meantime, we should pass laws ensuring same-sex couples enjoy the same legal rights as heterosexual couples in the areas that matter: inheritance, medical decisions, tax law and adoption. That's a simple matter of fairness.

gay marriage, Spitzer, New York, politics, midtopia

Estate tax still on the table

Seanate majority leader Bill Frist, his presidential aspirations in tatters and aflame, has been trying to resurrect his hopes by addressing such pressing issues as gay marriage and the estate tax.

The former is doomed to defeat, as even supporters acknowledge, which exposes the "red meat for the base" motivation behind bringing it to the floor for a vote. But the latter is still alive.

GOP leaders on Tuesday put abolition of the federal estate tax on the Senate's election-year agenda as other senators weighed ideas to shrink, but not erase, the tax.

President Bush's tax cuts eliminated the estate tax in 2010, but that temporary law expires, and the tax comes back to life, one year later.

I always admired this cute provision, designed to mask the budget implications of repealing the estate tax while increasing the political pain of letting it be restored. It has done one thing, though: it's forcing Congress to find a more palatable permanent fix.

At least the discussion is moving away from outright repeal and toward some sort of compromise:

Kyl told other GOP senators Tuesday that common ground might be found by increasing the size of an estate exempt from taxation to $5 million per person or $10 million per couple, according to GOP aides familiar with the proposal speaking on condition of anonymity while negotiations continued.

His idea would tax estates between $5 million and $30 million equal to the top tax rate for most capital gains. The remainder of the largest estates would be taxed at 30 percent, those aides said.

That's better than an outright appeal, but I still have two reservations. One, how much will this reduce tax collections? And two, my main philosophical objection remains. Why this tax cut, and why now? There are at least two budget problems more pressing than the estate tax: the Alternative Minimum Tax, and the yawning budget deficits. The estate tax cut will make solving the other two even more difficult, and that just reveals majorly screwed up priorities. However unfair you think the estate tax is, the AMT is even more unfair. And on a purely practical level, the AMT increasingly affects people who need the money, unlike the estate tax. And the deficit is a bouquet of dead roses that we're passing on to our children, regardless of their ability to pay.

Congress needs to prioritize, and shelve the estate tax until they address more pressing concerns.

Update: As expected, the Senate has rejected the gay-marriage ban.

gay marriage, estate tax, Frist, politics, midtopia

Brokeback Mounties

Sorry, couldn't resist the play on words.

A couple of gay Canadian Royal Mounted Policemen are getting married, a first for the storied force.

When the two constables become the first male Mounties to marry each other, the grumpiest witness-from-afar might well be Prime Minister Stephen Harper. The planned union of Jason Tree and David Connors in Nova Scotia on June 30 has cast a spotlight on Harper's pledge to his conservative backers to try to roll back same-sex marriage laws.

Harper's misgivings aside, this is just one more example of the inevitable tide of equal rights for homosexuals. Canada has same-sex marriage and it hasn't wrecked the country; Massachusetts has same-sex marriage and the state is doing just fine, thank you.

I respect people who truly, thoughtfully think homosexuality is a sin. But that's a personal value, like deciding to be a vegetarian or a pacifist. Religious belief is not sufficient basis for denying basic rights and privileges, just like it would be wrong for vegetarians to use the law to compel the rest of us to be vegetarians, too.

Good luck to the two Mounties, and may the day quickly come when no one feels that someone else's marriage is any of their business.

Canada, Mounties, gay marriage, politics, midtopia

Creative professions oppose gay-marriage ban

The Twin Cities is one of the few nationally recognized centers of the ad industry outside of New York and Los Angeles. Twin Cities ad offices have billings of about $2 billion a year, and provide thousands of well-paying jobs.

That's why we should care about the letter that 50 local ad agencies sent to Gov. Pawlenty.

The letter says that such a constitutional amendment could undermine a creative business climate, stifle recruitment and send the wrong message to potential clients.

The agencies are self-interested to a degree, since many creative fields such as advertising have a higher-than-average percentage of gay employees. But when that industry is a major part of the state economy, we all have an interest in it.

There's research that shows a correlation between a region's gay population and its cultural and economic vibrancy. One can debate the causality -- do concentrations of gays create such vibrancy, or does the vibrancy create an environment that is attractive to gays? -- but the correlation is clear.

A gay marriage ban is not only unjust; it would be economically damaging to the state, chasing away the sort of high-paying jobs that we should be trying to attract.

creative class, gay marriage, politics, midtopia

Senate kills gay marriage bill

As expected, the DFL-controlled Senate killed the proposed gay marriage amendment in committee, on a 5-4 party-line vote.

There was only one interesting twist:

Senators altered the proposed amendment so that it wouldn't have asked voters to strictly ban the legal recognition of same-sex relationships. Instead, it would have prohibited judges from defining marriage in Minnesota, reserving that right for state legislators.

Though one Democrat supported that alteration, all five then proceeded to kill the amendment anyway.

That would almost have made the subsequent campaign interesting.

The DFL did the right thing, but of course they were self-interested as well. Without the amendment on the ballot, social conservatives have less reason to turn out on election day. And that's really what this whole thing was about: Republicans trying to use a wedge issue to get their supporters to the polls, and Democrats trying to foil them.

It cannot be said too often: whatever you think about gay marriage, this amendment is premature. Marriage, for better or worse, is still restricted to men and women in Minnesota. If and when that status is threatened, then we can talk about mucking with the state constitution. Until then, this is just noise, smoke and political grandstanding.

Sen. Michelle Bachmann, the amendment's main backer, has become a single-issue legislator. For that reason alone she should be sent packing in November.

As a side note, Bachmann's openly gay stepsister showed up at the hearing with her partner to "show that the issue affects all Minnesota families." That puts Bachmann in an elite group: antigay activists or politicians with gay relatives. The group includes Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue, whose son Jamiel is gay. And Alan Keyes, whose daughter, Maya, is gay.

As Dick Cheney (whose daughter, Mary, is gay) demonstrates, having a gay relative usually makes you more sympathetic to their situation. With the exception of folks like Bachmann, it will get harder and harder to find support for antigay policies as more and more people realize that people they know and care about are gay. When someone makes Dick Cheney look sensitive by comparison, you know they have a compassion deficit.

Minnesota, Bachmann, gay marriage, politics, midtopia

Johnson dodges censure

The state Senate ethics subcommittee dropped a complaint against Majority Leader Dean Johnson on the condition he apologize.

Members of the Senate special subcommittee on ethics said they agreed to the deal in part because they feared they would never be able to determine whether Johnson or Supreme Court justices were telling the truth without being able to question the justices. They said they considered the possibility that justices could successfully claim they were immune from testifying before the legislature.

"We wanted to avoid a potential separations of power conflict," said Sen. Thomas Neuville, R-Northfield.

The panel, which has two DFLers and two Republican members, voted unanimously in favor of the deal after a two-hour closed session attended by Johnson, his attorney and two Republican critics.

Neuville's quote echoes the argument I made earlier about both parties having an interest in not going after the judiciary. The Republicans are now free to make hay with this in the upcoming elections, and they should. Johnson and the DFL can plausibly try to put this behind them. In any case it appears sanity has prevailed, with the DFL showing humility and the GOP showing restraint.

It'll be interesting to see if this is brought up during the debate/argument over the gay marriage amendment. If it does, it will be a mistake. That battle should be fought on the merits, not personal attacks on opponents.

gay marriage, Dean Johnson, Minnesota, politics, midtopia

Dean Johnson: Lie vs. lie

The Dean Johnson blowup continues -- fanned by Republicans and gay marriage opponents, downplayed by Democrats.

Chief Justice Russell Anderson adds the latest fuel:

State Supreme Court Chief Justice Russell Anderson on Monday said flatly that no member of the court -- including former Chief Justice Kathleen Blatz -- ever spoke to Senate Majority Leader Dean Johnson about the state's marriage laws.

"This just never happened," Anderson said.

If true -- and we should keep in mind that the judiciary has a selfish interest in preserving its own reputation -- then Johnson just flat-out lied when talking to pastors about gay marriage. Further, his evolving retractions of that January statement appear to contain ever-finer shades of truth.

None of this is making Johnson look good, and it shouldn't. He should be taking to heart the high price one pays for playing games with the truth.

But does this really change anything? No. No one is accusing Johnson of habitual lying, or fraud, or using his office to commit crimes or enrich himself.

He should be embarassed. He should be contrite. It should be brought up during his re-election campaign so that voters have a chance to make their views on the subject known.

But should he resign, as anti-gay-marriage groups are calling for? No. That's for voters to decide, and it speaks poorly of the marriage-amendment lobby that they would push for such an extreme sanction. Tom DeLay still has his seat -- and he's been charged with actual crimes. Only intemperate voices called for him to quit Congress.

Should Johnson resign his leadership post, as some Republicans have suggested? That is a slightly more reasonable course, but again, no. A single lie that does not involve a substantive wrong does not deserve that punishment. And Republicans should be wary about pushing for that too vigorously, lest they invite close scrutiny of every statement they've ever made to see how closely they track with reality.

I expect my politicans to tell the truth, but I also recognize that they are human. And while they need to be held to a higher standard, the punishment should fit the crime. In my book, the ongoing flogging that Johnson is getting constitutes appropriate and sufficient punishment, with voters getting the chance to render final judgement on election day.

Finally, the most interesting thing to me are the political calculations being made -- calculations that could end up forcing Johnson to fall on his sword even if it turns out that he didn't lie in January.

When it gets down to it, either Johnson or at least one justice is lying. Unfortunately for Johnson, everyone -- including Johnson -- has a strong interest in protecting the reputation of the state Supreme Court. People expect partisanship from politicians, but expect their judges to be neutral arbitrators. Faith in that concept is one of the key supports of the balance-of-powers system.

Republicans, whatever they may actually think about "activist" judges, find it convenient to treat the justices as unimpeachably honest in this case, because their real target is Johnson. Johnson and the Democrats, for their part, cannot defend themselves without either slandering the judiciary or revealing and destroying any actual sympathies that might exist between some justices and the DFL. Either course would ultimately hurt the DFL more than it would help them.

As long as they don't overplay their hand, the Republicans have a win-win situation here. But the rest of us should be aware that this is largely a minor political game. Weigh Johnson's lie against his 36 years of service and make up your own mind, without undue input from either Republican attackers or DFL defenders.

gay marriage, Dean Johnson, Minnesota, politics, midtopia

Kersten returns

Another day, another intellectually lazy gay marriage column from Katherine Kersten.

This time her trope is that okaying gay marriage will turn all sorts of "ordinary Minnesotans" into official bigots.

Amendment supporters are ordinary Minnesotans: soccer moms, Twins fans, the folks next door. But some advocates of same-sex marriage apparently view them as a sinister and unsavory bunch, even comparing them to racial bigots.

Just in passing, let's point out that amendment opponents are "ordinary Minnesotans", too. Kersten's arguments often get framed as "us" vs. "them." It gets tiresome.

Also, fear of being called a "bigot" strikes me as one of the weakest possible reasons for abridging someone's rights. Next shall we imprison people because they looked at us funny?

The money quote, though, is when Kersten argues that "if same-sex marriage becomes a civil right, the belief that one-man, one-woman marriage is best for kids becomes discriminatory, and those who hold it become bigots."

This sentence fails so many rules of logic and argument that I don't know where to begin.

First, Kersten accidentally or deliberately mixes two separate ideas: what one believes, versus what limits one can place on others based on one's beliefs. Civil rights laws are based on actions, not thoughts. You can think anything you like, but you cannot abridge someone else's civil rights regardless of what you believe. The idea -- an idea fundamental to our form of government -- is that some rights trump majority opinion. That is why we are a republic and not a pure democracy. Legal compulsions and prohibitions should be something reserved for extreme cases, where the societal interest is so compelling, and the potential harm so apparent, that it demands action. The effort to prohibit gay marriage fails both tests.

Second, allowing gay marriage would not make bigots out of people simply for thinking man-woman pairings are better for kids. That's an indefensible strawman argument, and Kersten should be ashamed of herself for employing it. Plenty of people support legalized divorce, for example, while thinking that divorce is generally bad for kids and should be discouraged. Lots of people who don't drink hard liquor, or don't drink at all, nonetheless support legal access to alcohol. In both cases, people seem to recognize that their personal view on divorce or alcohol is not something that should be forced upon others who may feel differently.

The comparisons are not perfect -- divorce and drinking are choices, while sexual orientation is not . But someone who thinks divorce is harmful is not an anti-divorce bigot; someone who discriminates against divorcees is. Someone who thinks alcohol is harmful is not an anti-alcohol bigot; someone who discriminates against people who imbibe is.

In the end, society decides who will be perceived as "bigots" -- not the law, not the activists Kersten likes to quote in an attempt to paint all gay-marriage supporters with the actions of their most extreme elements. It's the "ordinary Minnesotans" who Kersten claims to speak for. So her point is either false or reflects a lack of confidence that the majority is really on her side -- which might help explain her resorting to fearmongering instead of debating gay marriage on the merits.

It's true that over time the law can shape perceptions; gender equity laws have helped dismantle the idea that a woman's place is in the home, for example. But that's hardly coercive. It's only threatening to people who have no faith in the foundation of their beliefs.

And if that's the fear, the battle has already been lost. Young people are far more accepting of gay marriage than their parents and grandparents. If that trend continues, gay marriage will have majority support within a generation.

So Kersten's fear of being branded a bigot may be well-founded, but not for the reason she claims. It has nothing to do with whether gay marriage is legalized. It has nothing to do with the words or actions of a handful of GLBT activists. It has to do with changing societal opinion on the subject, of which the gay marriage debate is but a reflection. If I were her I'd abandon the appeal to the majority, because that appeal will stop working in a few short years. If she wants to ban gay marriage, she should start articulating why gay marriage is harmful and thus prohibiting it is justified.

And if she wants to avoid being labeled a bigot, a good place to start would be by stopping the baseless fearmongering.

Minnesota, Kersten, gay marriage, politics, midtopia

Johnson "embellished" conversation with justice

A follow-up to this post. Dean Johnson, given a choice between being branded a liar or an ethics breaker, says he "embellished" his conversation with a state Supreme Court justice when talking with pastors.

"I embellished it to say the judiciary doesn't seem too interested in overturning this," Johnson said.

He said he had been attempting to dissuade the clergy members from the need for a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage when two conservative members pressed him on his assessment.

"I suppose I became frustrated," he said. "I made a mistake."

And that will probably be the end of it. The Star Tribune editorialized that Johnson owes a lot of people an apology, including fellow opponents of a gay-marriage amendment, and he does. But as I said in my earlier post, this brouhaha has nothing to do with the underlying merits (or lack thereof) of the amendment. I hope Johnson is properly chastised, but it should not affect his approach to the issue.

Dean Johnson, homosexual, gay, marriage, minnesota, politics, midtopia

Tired arguments, lousy logic

I didn't really mean to have so many gay marriage posts in the last few days, but the issue just keeps cropping up.

It must have been a slow day for conservative columnist Katherine Kersten, because she devoted her entire allotment of newsprint to regurgitating one of the tiredest attacks on gay marriage -- that it will necessarily lead to polygamy.

Her argument:

But wait. What if a person loves two people, or three or more? If "one man-one woman" is a discriminatory limitation on the choice of a life partner, on what grounds can the state logically restrict marriage to two people? The fact is, once you adopt same-sex marriage -- legally changing the standard for marriage from one-man, one-woman to a "committed relationship" -- there is no principled way to prevent its extension to polygamy or other forms of "plural marriage" or partnership.

First, let's just note that in practical terms this is a straw man. The number of people who actively support polygamy are vanishingly few. It just isn't going to be legalized any time soon because there's no meaningful political pressure to do so.

But I'll play along.

Legally speaking, the major problem with preventing gays from marrying is that the government allows these two people to marry, but not those two people. The only reason for the different treatment is the gender of the people involved. That is presumptively discriminatory, and must be justified on practical grounds -- showing that the discrimination serves a legitimate government interest.

That is qualitatively different from saying any two people can marry, but any three (or more) can't. The situations are not the same, so treating them differently is less of a problem. You might still need to justify it, but the hurdle is far lower.

Logically speaking, polygamists can already make the "two vs. three" discrimination argument. That doesn't change just because we recognize two people of any gender and not just man/woman pairings.

Further, polygamy is a choice, not a condition. That makes it more susceptible to regulation than more ingrained characteristics such as sexual orientation.

Let's now get into the philosophy of gay marriage.

Philosophically, one can view gay marriage as "imposing" acceptance of homosexuality on an unwilling majority. But that implies that legality equals acceptance, which isn't a traditionally conservative viewpoint. A true conservative argues that citizens should generally be free to do as they please, and government intrusion should be kept to a minimum, stepping in only as much as necessary to preserve order.

Approval simply doesn't enter into it. What such a viewpoint defends is the concept of individual liberty -- not whatever each individual chooses to do with that liberty.

And that's all that allowing gay marriage would do. It's not forcing anyone to do anything; it's simply allowing homosexual couples to have the same rights and responsiblities that heterosexual couples do. There's no imposition in any meaningful sense of the word.

Having established those cases, let me now take up the separate question of whether polygamy should be outlawed.

Respect for individual liberty means that the only reason to ban a behavior is if it can be shown to be harmful. So before we get all upset about the prospect of polygamy being legalized, we should establish why it should remain illegal. If we can't show harm, there's no logical reason to ban it.

What harm does polygamy do? And is that harm sufficient to warrant government intervention?

I'm willing to believe that there are provable downsides to polygamy, but I can't think of one offhand. There are plenty of plausible arguments -- it subjugates women, for instance. But proof seems to be in short supply.

There are also practical arguments, such as an increased risk of welfare fraud or the need to rewrite a sizable chunk of our legal code to deal with multiperson marriages. Those are not philosophical objections, and would not be weakened by the existence of gay marriage.

That's the ultimate way to draw a line between two behaviors: show actual harm. Gay marriage opponents have repeatedly failed to show that gay marriage will be harmful to society. So they raise the specter of legalized polygamy as part of their rearguard action. Well, the solution to that is entirely in their hands: if they don't want gay marriage to lead to polygamy, all they have to do is show that polygamy is harmful. Do that, and I'll lead the charge to keep it illegal.

You know where to reach me.

Minnesota, polygamy, Kersten, gay marriage, politics, midtopia

Dean Johnson, Court tamperer?

Democrat Dean Johnson, majority leader in the Minnesota Senate, has been caught on tape saying he had talked to several state Supreme Court justices about gay marriage, and they assured him that the current law restricting marriage to a man and a woman would not be overturned -- meaning that a gay-marriage amendment is unnecessary.

In the recording - made without Johnson's knowledge - he says he had talked with two of the three justices named Anderson on the bench and they had told him, "Dean, we're not going to do this. We're not going to do this." He also said former Chief Justice Kathleen Blatz, who recently stepped down, told him, "'We're not going to touch it."'

If true, Johnson and the justices committed a serious ethical breach. Justices are not supposed to discuss pending cases or make committments on how they'll vote.

The justices deny it and Johnson says he chose his words poorly. But it's hard to imagine any other meaning for what he said. So either he was emptily boasting then, or is lying now.

Of course, none of this has anything to do with whether gay marriage is a good idea or not; it's just hardball politics driven by disagreement over gay marriage. And I think it points up the lack of substantive arguments against gay marriage, especially as framed here in Minnesota.

The proposed amendment would ban not only gay marriage but also civil unions. One can believe that homosexuality is immoral, but that's not an argument for denying gays the legal benefits of marriage. Public policy should be based on objective facts or principles, not personal dislike or religious prohibitions.

And the case against gay marriage has no objective basis. "It will harm marriage?" Nonsense. "Marriage is for procreation?" Nonsense, and besides, gays are conceiving and adopting children in ever-increasing numbers. "It indicates societal approval of gays?" Not true, unless we think that recognizing third and fourth marriages mean we approve of serial monogamists.

Gay marriage isn't about societal approval; it's about keeping the government's nose out of people's private business. If the state can show a compelling interest in providing support to marriage, it may do so -- but it must establish neutral criteria that narrowly address its interest, and provide support to anyone who meets those criteria -- regardless of gender, age, moral character or any other irrelevant factor.

For centuries marriage was a purely civil institution, and did not involve churches. The perfect solution would be to return to a form of that, in which "marriages" are performed by churches and the state recognizes only "civil unions." "Civil unions for everyone, marriage if you want one and can find a church willing to perform the ceremony" would allow all couples to have the same legal rights while letting churches establish their own standards for marriage.

But I don't foresee that happening in the near future. And until it does, gay marriage -- or "civil unions" that provide the same legal benefits as marriage -- is simply the right thing to do.


Dean Johnson, homosexual, gay, marriage, minnesota, politics, midtopia