...Anderson and Girgis instead propose the following: “revisionists would agree to oppose the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), thus ensuring that federal law retains the traditional definition of marriage as the union of husband and wife …In return, traditionalists would agree to support federal civil unions offering most or all marital benefits.” But these unions “would be available to any two adults who commit to sharing domestic responsibilities, whether or not their relationship is sexual,” provided that they are “otherwise ineligible to marry each other.”

In other words, there would be federal civil unions for gays--but also for other domestic pairs: elderly widowed sisters, for example, or bachelor roommates.

At first glance, their claim that Rauch and Blankenhorn base their proposal on “the presumption that these relationships are or may be sexual” seems strange. After all, Rauch and Blankenhorn never mention sex, and the state neither knows nor cares (nor checks) whether people are having sex once they’re married or “civilly united.”

On the other hand, people generally assume (with good reason) that marriages and civil unions are sexual, or more broadly romantic. Romantic pair-bonding seems to be a fundamental human desire--for straights and gays--and part of what marriage does is to acknowledge pair-bonds. It does so not because the government is sentimental about such things, but because it recognizes the important role such bonds have in the lives of individuals and the community.

Anderson and Girgis are correct that there are other important bonds in society, and we may well want to extend more legal recognition to them. There is no reason that two cohabitating spinsters shouldn’t be granted mutual hospital visitation rights if they want them.

But the question remains whether we want to extend “most or all” federal marital benefits to any cohabitating couple otherwise ineligible to marry, as Anderson and Girgis propose.

And this question prompts additional ones: why limit such recognition to couples? Mutually interdependent relationships don’t only come in twos. Oddly, Anderson and Girgis seem to have more in common with radicals who seek to move “beyond marriage” than they do with anyone in the mainstream marriage debate.

Labels: beyond marriage, civil unions, David Blankenhorn, gay/straight differences, Jonathan Rauch, Ryan T. Anderson, Sherif Girgis

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...But the compromise doesn’t cede the word “marriage.” Blankenhorn and Rauch aren’t trying to end debate over the word “marriage.” What the B/R compromise (as I shall now call it) attempts to do is put aside two sub-debates associated with marriage, while leaving the primary debate — over formal marriage equality — untouched and ongoing.

I think marriage equality proponents should take this deal, if it becomes a real legislative possibility.

...So we'd go from today's world, where one side demands full marriage rights and the other side rejects even minimal recognition of gay couples, to a world where same-sex couples got federal civil unions—which they'd have to share with a few nuns and aging sisters—but gays agreed not to ask for more. States, presumably, could continue to tussle over gay marriage, but the federal debate would be over.

There's much to think about here, but one practical question strikes me as a likely show-stopper: How could any agreement not to pursue changes in DOMA bind future activists and politicians? A gentlemen's agreement wouldn't be enforceable, and a constitutional amendment would be both difficult as a political matter and unacceptable to SSM advocates, who will see it as writing inequality into the Constitution—the nuclear option, from our point of view.

That's just a first-blush reaction, though. I think the most important thing about Anderson-Girgis is its willingness to reach out and try to do something for same-sex couples, as well as something to ameliorate the culture wars. It should be received by SSM advocates as a good-faith gesture, and it deserves to be broadly and respectfully discussed. And it's another sign that maybe, just maybe, the ice is beginning to thaw around the frozen gay-marriage debate.

Labels: civil unions, David Blankenhorn, gay marriage, Jonathan Rauch, religious liberty, Ryan T. Anderson, Sherif Girgis

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