Does anyone know when the government first started being able to preside over marriages? It seems like a lot of this is an old fight, about whether marriage belongs to the churches or the state, bubbling up. That is where the bile is creeping in; to many, it looks like the christians are trying to encode christian morality. To (some of) the Christians, they feel the rite of marriage is being taken away from them. Really, it was taken off them a long time ago, but as long as the governments requirements for marriage looked more or less like the religious requirements, the fight could be avoided. If someone supports full civil unions, and opposes gay marriage, which is how I hear Kerry, it isn't necessary to assume they are trying to prevent homosexuality from gaining respectability, if they were, they'd support the strong version of the amendment, where civil unions are not permitted the legal benefits of marriage, as Bush does. I want marriage to be a civil institution, but we need to understand why people might not, and that it isn't the same as wanting to lock away the homosexuals.

The most important thing I learned at St. Johns was that the conservative and religious are not evil, and a few of them are smarter and more thoughtful than I am, and spend a lot of effort trying to be good and just. I read something on the local list-serve this morning that suggested that all opponents of full gay marriage were morally responsible for the child abuse in the catholic church. Presumably this made sense to the person who said it. I find it utterly dispiriting how quickly public discourse, particularly among like-minded people, descends into the demonization of the others. _
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