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Marriage-lite.

Article Excerpt
JONATHAN Rauch persuasively demonstrates, central to everything else, that those of us who are not proponents of gay marriage do not have the option of hoping the issue will go away. As Rauch puts it, we have reached a bend in the river. Major changes will happen concerning the right of gays to engage in unions similar to marriage. The question is: How can that which is inevitable be shaped for the better by those policy options that remain open to us?

On this point, I am more fatalistic than Rauch. He favors a process in which the states individually decide, one that lets us watch and learn from the different courses they take. He thinks a federal mandate would be bad. I agree wholeheartedly. But the constitutional scholars I have listened to lead me to conclude that Rauch's hopes that the courts can be restrained will be disappointed. Over the next few years, we will see carefully crafted cases brought to carefully selected courts. The Defense of Marriage Act will not hold. The full faith and credit clause of the Constitution will be interpreted to mean that all states must recognize a gay union recognized by, for example, Massachusetts. With that will come gay unions throughout the United States, very soon. I don't propose to argue this point--I'm not a constitutional scholar. But that's the assumption I am using in my own thinking about policy options. I also assume that a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage will fail. I personally oppose such an amendment, but that's not the point. The political reality is that it is not going to happen.

There are only two possibilities for influencing the course this revolution takes. One is a constitutional amendment that does not forbid gay unions, but expressly frees states...