NATIONAL REVIEW ON FEDERAL MARRIAGE AMENDMENT

[Not online yet, but here are excerpts from Ramesh Ponnuru's piece in the current issue about divisions within the "social Right" over FMA:]

...Bill Bennett, Rios, and the Family Research Council, among others, argued strongly that
it would be pointless to fight for an amendment that allowed gay marriage in all but name. The amendment had to "protect an institution, not a word."

...It fell to Chuck Colson, the leader of Prison Fellowship and perhaps the most unifying figure among social conservatives today, to find a solution. On October 15, he succeeded in getting more than 20 groups to come up with a common position. They agreed that the amendment would prohibit gay marriage. It would also prohibit the states and the federal
government, including both the courts and the legislatures, from providing any benefits to people that were contingent on their being involved in a sexual relationship outside of marriage. The amendment would, however, allow state legislators to extend the particular privileges of marriage to gay couples -- just not as gay couples. People not in gay
relationships would also have to be eligible.

Say, for example, a state had made co-signing for loans a privilege of marriage. The state legislature could decide, under the amendment, to extend that privilege to any two people who share a home: a lesbian
couple, or an unmarried heterosexual couple, or two sisters who share the rent, or whoever. The legislature could come up with a bundle of
privileges formerly reserved to married couples -- bereavement leave, hospital-visitation rights, the ability to make joint adoptions, and so on -- and provide them more widely. ...

[Eve says: Wow, on first glance Colson's version sounds pretty much exactly like what I'd want. If people who support an FMA have objections to his position, I'd be interested in hearing them.]
posted by Eve at 12:22 AM VOTE

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