Thursday, July 06, 2006

NY Court Strikes Down Gay Marriage

The New York state Supreme Court today ruled that

state law does not permit gay couples to get married there and that such a restriction does not violate New York's constitution.
This was apparently something of a surprise from one of the nation's more liberal Supreme Courts but regardless, it once again shows the inanity of this debate. The moonbats on the left are crying foul, claiming that civil unions are a form of "separate but equal" discrimination, and the Right is celebrating. So, here's my solution: Get the government out of the marriage business.

How can we go about doing this? Simple: all couples recognized by the federal government, regardless of sexual orientation, are granted "civil union" status - so two men are the same as a heterosexual couple in all regards, in the eyes of the government. The marriage part comes in on behalf of individual churches who can choose to perform marriage ceremonies for gay couples on a denominational or congregational basis, so long as that couple already has civil union status in the eyes of the Feds.

The vast majority of references to marriage in the federal government can be found in the tax code - change that to civil union and most of our problem would be solved. Would the Left still call civil unions discriminatory if that was all the federal government recognized? I doubt it. The difficult problem with this plan remains, of course, the uphill slog to convince social conservatives that this change doesn't actually undermine American society - any ideas on how we do that?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

That policy sounds exactly like a few paper's I've written over the past several years. That's the best solution to this issue. Marriage is a religious institution, not a state institution. This also cuts out all those bullshit 24-hour Britney Spears Las Vegas "marriages" that are more disgraceful than a happy homosexual couple.