The False Compromise

What if you were a California voter who had an earned degree from the University of California Los Angeles – a state institution – and someone else who did not attend the university nor did the coursework insisted that spending his time sunning himself on the beach was just as valid use of his time, and demanded he also be awarded the same degree from UCLA?

What if you, as a voter, said "no" to this idea twice? Would you consider it a good compromise if your degree was rescinded so that you and the beach bum would be treated "equally"? My guess is no.

The False Compromise is getting government out of marriage licensing entirely (or so they say), either by dropping the word "marriage" or not recognizing personal unions at all. Michael A. Lindenberger of Time Magazine took a look at that. First he mentions Jewish and Catholic rituals that do not get licensing from the state. But these rituals do not involve the sharing or transfer of property, nor do these rituals naturally tend to result in bringing children into the world, or subjecting them to an unrelated adult as head of their home. Those and other reasons are why marriage is different.

And for non-believers or those for whom the word marriage is less important, the civil union license issued by the state would be all they needed to unlock the benefits reserved in most states, and in federal law, for "married" couples.

This is coming from the assumption that any two people who claim to be a couple should have those benefits. Why are those benefits issued in the first place? There is a reasoning behind it. Domestic partnerships in California were not created for the benefit of the state – more to satisfy the demands of same-sex couples, many of whom ended up not satisfied by something that treated them as married. And thus, the people of the state thought they were helping people who turned around and used that help against them, using the partnerships law as Trojan Horse to neuter state marriage licensing.

Both sets of lawyers agreed that the idea would resolve the equal protection issue.

Sure – if you stop government issuing of any sort of licensing, then everyone has equal non-access.
Why try to pretend marriage is nothing more than a domestic partnership or civil union? Let's really go for "equality" and only have the state issue a Roommate License, and nothing more. After all, some platonic roommates depend very much on each other. And why should platonic roommates not be treated equally to lovers?

Take the state out of the marriage business, and then both kinds of couples - straight and gay - would be treated the same.

Why should three different kinds of voluntary associations be treated the same? Simply because someone wants them to be? If that someone is the people of the state, then that would be legal. But why should we do that?

And as Justice Chin considers whether he can craft a compromise with his fellow justices that would both uphold Prop 8 - and therefore the right of the people to amend the state constitution - and assert the right of gay people to be treated equally, he may find that the folks who cling hardest to the word "marriage" are the gay couples themselves. After all, what was the most sweeping part of the May 2008 decision Ming and his colleagues issued granting [brideless or groomless couples neutered state marriage licenses]? It was the idea that the word "marriage" itself is so strong that denying it to [same-sex] couples violates the most sacred rights enshrined in the state constitution, the right for all people to be treated with dignity and fairness.

This is a leap. What about single people or trios, or like I said, roommates? Are they not being treated with dignity and fairness because the state doesn't issue them marriage licenses? What about friends who aren't even roommates?

How can anyone who argues that state-licensed marriage is an unalienable right ever say it would be okay not to let anyone have access to that "right"? The False Compromise smacks of what some marriage defenders have said all along – this whole thing is more about tearing down the traditional family, including the esteeming of marriage – than it is about the rights of homosexual people.

There are reasons we, as a state, license marriage. Doing so is of benefit to the state. The kind of relationships that form marriage perpetuate society. We are under no obligation to treat different kinds of voluntary associations the same, no matter how much an activist group wants it that way. We should not forget that our soft-hearted acceptance of domestic partnerships has been met with scorn and a trouncing of our will.