Marriage and civilization.(PUBLIC POLICY)(same-sex marriage)

ONE of the great coups of the movement for same-sex marriage has been to plant the premise that it represents the inevitable future. This sense has inhibited even some who accept that marriage is by nature the union of a man and a woman. They fear that throwing themselves into the cause of opposing it is futile--worse, that it will call down the judgment of history that they were bigots.

Yet a majority of Americans continue to oppose same-sex marriage. Support for it has certainly increased over the last 15 years, but the assumption that we can predict the future in which same-sex marriage is uncontroversial by drawing a straight line from this trend is unwarranted. Even among young voters, a majority of whom support same-sex marriage, that majority is hardly overwhelming.

Our guess is that if the federal judiciary does not intervene to impose same-sex marriage on the entire country, we are not going to see it triumph from coast to coast. Rather, we will for some time have a patchwork of laws. The division will not be so much between socially liberal and socially conservative states as between those states where voters can amend their state constitutions easily and those where they cannot. Thus same-sex marriage is likely to stay the law of the land in Massachusetts, Iowa, Vermont, and Connecticut, and perhaps also in New Hampshire.

In two of those states, at least, democratic procedure is now being respected. Vermont has chosen to recognize same-sex marriages legislatively, and New Hampshire may do so. While free from the taint of lawlessness, these decisions seem to us unwise. Few social goods will come from recognizing same-sex couples as married. Some practical benefits may accrue to the couples, but most of them could easily be realized without changing marriage laws. One still sometimes hears people make the allegedly "conservative" case that same-sex marriage will reduce promiscuity and encourage commitment among homosexuals. This prospect seems improbable: Where governments have recognized same-sex marriages and civil unions, this recognition does not appear to have had any noticeable effect in this respect. In any case, the encouragement of commitment among homosexuals is simply not as important a goal as the encouragement of lasting heterosexual bonds.

Which brings us to the question of equality. Same-sex couples want their unions recognized by governments in large part as a symbolic affirmation of their equivalence, at ...