What I don’t inderstand is how any conservative with a belief in people taking responsibility, can favor anything but abolishing domestic partnerships, even if that requires legalizing marriage for homosexuals.

It’s reasonably defensible for a justice to rule that a practice is allowed if a state has not specifically prohibited it, and to rule that a simple generic declaration of equal rights across classes extend quite broadly. It’s utterly within the domain of variance of judicial philosophy.

I strongly agree with Tim above on the ideals and the best way to draw the lines. And I agree with you that the feasibility issue is a legitimate question. I also agree with you that IDEALLY such matters would be determined by legislatures. However, the lesson of variance in judicial philosophy really ought to be that you should write the law you want with great care and specificity.

I wonder whether courts ruling in favor of gay marriage where state constitutions fail to prohibit it while generally extending broad civil rights will be subject to the same level of vitriol as say RvW. While a substantial fraction of several post RvW new generations has seen fit to adopt a pro-life perspective, I am skeptical that this will be mirrored with gay rights. My perception is that the vast majority of the young adults in the current generation view anti-gay sentiment as the province of cranky old douches.

In other words, abortion is likely to remain an issue and keep alive the “judicial activism” issue, but 20 or 30 years from now most folks will regard anti-gay sentiment with the same disgust most of us view racist and sexist sentiment. So adding the gay marriage rulings to the list of grudges held by anti-judicial-activism folks will be a tough sell.

duus: long-run, I believe it is.

This scenario already exists – except for the equality of same-sex and opposite-sex couples. Church marriage I have (Unitarian) – legal marriage I do not. They are two completely separate entities, and neither depends on the other. The current legal term for “legal recognition of civil unions” is “marriage”.

The problem is, we’re using the same word to mean two different things. That’s fine, except that it confuses people. Also, we’re having a hard time getting to that place where “legal recognition of civil unions” – marriage actually does “exist for heterosexual and homosexual couples alike.”

…and gay marriage *is*?

But I’ve come to believe that, while it might be preferable to separate the religious act of marriage from the governmental act of bestowing rights, it’s not politically feasible. We’re not going to get municipalities to stop issuing marriage licenses and we’re not going to rewrite volumes of laws currently on the books. The only real politically possible course is to move same-sex unions into the existing legal structures of marriage. Obviously this upsets people, which is why it should be done democratically and not through court decree. But I just don’t see how we can advance the cause any other way.

I disagree. Why is the government marrying anyone anyway? The government should get out of the marriage business entirely and remove all references of the term from the legal code. The term has too much religious backstory for the government to adopt it. Instead, there should be legal recognition of civil unions, which would exist for heterosexual and homosexual couples alike. By separating the legal implications from the social and religious ones, much of the objection evaporates. For much of America, the hangup is in that word.

Let the churches decide who gets “married”. The Unitarians and Congregationalists would jump at the opportunity to marry homosexual couples. The Southern Baptists and Catholics would never do it. Let them argue about it. For the government to be involved in this debate is as inane as them taking sides in consubstantiation versus transubstantiation or faith versus works. The government would just recognize civil partnerships and accord them the tax breaks, property rights, and whatever else goes along with the deal. God may not like gay marriage, but he can’t do anything about who gets to file jointly.